The government on Monday said it has set a target of achieving defence manufacturing worth Rs 1,75,000 crore, including defence exports of Rs 35,000 crore by 2024-25. Minister of state for Defence Ajay Bhatt, replying to a question in Rajya Sabha, said the value of production undertaken by private companies and state-run defence manufacturers in 2021-22 was Rs 86,078 crore while the amount was Rs 88,631 crore in 2020-21 and Rs 63,722 crore in 2019-20.

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The value of production was Rs 50,499 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 54,951 crore in 2017-18.

"The government has set the target of achieving defence manufacturing worth Rs 1,75,000 crore including defence exports of Rs 35,000 crore by the year 2024-25," Bhatt said.

The minister also said the value of defence exports in 2021-22 was Rs 12,815 crore while it was Rs 13,398 crore till March 6 in the current fiscal.

To a separate question, he said the modernisation of armed forces to meet future challenges is a continuous process based on the long-term integrated planning process.

"The annual acquisition plan is formulated annually based on inputs from the services and is based on identified threats and inter-service prioritisation and emerging technologies," Bhatt said.

The minister said there has been a consistent increase in the share of the capital acquisition budget.

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"An amount of Rs 1,24,408.66 crore has been earmarked for capital acquisitions in the financial year 2022-23, which has been increased to Rs 1,32,727 crore for the year 2023-24," Bhatt said.

"Further, the DRDO has undertaken 50 mission mode and technology development projects worth Rs 23,722 crore in the last three years for development of indigenous weapons and technologies," he said.

Replying to another query, Bhatt said the Indian Navy has opened all branches to women at graduate level entries. The branches are executive, engineering, electrical and education.

The number of women who have applied for recruitment under the executive branch is 3,941, the number for engineering wing is 360, electrical is 652 and 411 have applied for education wing.

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