Defence Ministry Released a policy to re-assist blacklisting global defence firms

Defence Ministry Released a policy to re-assist blacklisting global defence firms. The Union Defence Ministry released new policy ‘Guidelines of the Ministry of Defence for penalties in business dealings with entities’ on November 21, 2016, to relook at the list of the companies that are banned from doing business in India. ii. Atleast a dozen of global defence firms are presently banned from doing business

in India because of allegations of corruption against them. However, due to such blacklisting, the Indian military is not able to access many of the global products. iii. This blacklisting policy was approved by the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on November 7 and the policy was released by the Defence Ministry on November 21. iv. New Policy Features: 1.Ban period has been reduced to 5 years from the previous 10 years but the upper ban limit is not specified. 2.It allows doing business with black listed firm for achieving National security only for the purpose of supporting the critical spare and maintenance or if the firm is the only source to support a certain system, but with the approval of the Defence Minister.