“Now that the (budget) announcement has been made for defence corridor, the first one will be built starting at Tamil Nadu, linking Chennai and Bengaluru. Announcement for the second corridor will soon be made,” said Sitharaman. While announcing the Union Budget in the Parliament Arun Jaitley proposed setting up two defence industrial corridors in the next fiscal. 

“We have taken measures to develop two defence industrial production corridors in the country. The government will bring out an industry- friendly defence production policy in 2018 to promote the domestic production by public sector, the private sector, and the MSMEs,” Jaitley said. 

The government has opened a private investment in the defence production including liberalising in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the Finance Minister informed.

Thanking Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the budget, Sitharaman said, “We are thankful to the Finance Minister for actually giving us a very reasoned out budget, and such financial accommodation where, even if you take the Revised Estimate figures of last year, it’s a 5.9 percent increase.” 

She added that if one looks at the Budgetary Estimates (BE) of last year then there is a 7.9 percent increase. The Finance Minister has also mentioned the emphasis for ‘Make in India’ and making Defence Production a priority in this country. It may be recalled that the Defence Minister had visited Chennai in November last year in a meeting convened by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). There, she had said,  

“During my conversation with top officials of the armed forces on Friday, I asked what the Army, Air Force and Navy expected from the industry, in terms of innovations and products. I believe we need to have a futuristic plan for the armed forces – a 50-year vision, that would serve the nation well. Tamil Nadu, in that respect, should emerge as a prosperous state, given its industrial progress so far.”