Indian shipyards lack capacity to meet Indian Navy warship demand

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

Indian shipyards lack the capacity to meet the Indian Navy and Coastguard warship requirements and this could impact heavily on maritime security interests, according to former chief of Naval staff.

Admiral Sureesh Mehta, former Chief of Naval Staff and chairman National Maritime Foundation, said as per Indian Navy’s long term induction plan, a significant amount of ship and submarines are to acquired in next 15 years and the indigenous construction of these assets requires an estimated capacity of over 100 standard ship units.

Interestingly, the combined capacity available in the three defence public sector unit (DPSU) shipyards is presently geared for construction of only 40 standard ship units.

And added to it the requirements of coastguard, the gap in strategic warship capacity building capacity further widens. This is a cause of serious concern, admiral Mehta said during a Confederation of Indian Industry conference on Building the Builder’s Navy.

The former chief of naval staff said indigenous shipbuilding accounts for nearly Rs 9000 crores ($1.9 billion) annually, constituting as it does nearly 60 per cent of the Navy’s total acquisition budget.

Whilst the shipyards have been over-active in pressing for their efforts at grabbing orders, and insisting on nomination without any competition, there has been scant regard towards improving capacity and productivity, which continues to be much below international standards. In terms of build-time trends, it is almost four times more than anywhere in the world, the admiral said.

While ships of 3,500 tonnes are globally built in 30 months, we take as much as 72 months to build Godavari class resulting in tripling of cost, the former navy chief.

“The public shipyards, with a tight form of bureaucratic control, have shown considerable lack of accountability in perspective planning. Yet, the system allows them to bite more than they can chew, and they continue to manage a lion’s share of the Indian defence sector orders,” the admiral said.