The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) on Friday cleared a deal for procurement of six advanced conventional submarines under Project-75I for the Navy at a cost of around ₹43,000 crore. The Request For Proposal (RFP) will now be issued to shortlisted Indian and foreign companies.
The DAC, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, discussed the P-75I case and cleared it, a defence official said.
The deal would take at least few years to be concluded and the given the high technology and the long timelines, the cost would be spread over many years, another official said.
This project is being processed through the Strategic Partnership (SP) model of the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), which aims to promote the role of Indian industry in defence manufacturing and build a domestic defence industrial ecosystem.
Last January, the DAC short-listed Mazgaon Docks Limited (MDL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T) as the Indian partners for the P-75I deal. The Navy will issue the RFP to the two Indian companies who would respond to it in partnership with a foreign Original Equipment manufacturer (OEM).
Five foreign OEMs- Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME)(South Korea), Naval Group (France), Navantia (Spain), Rosoboronexport (Russia) and TKMS (Germany) have also been selected.
The delay in the deal was the extra caution at each step of the process as this was being done for the first time, officials had said.