Atmanirbhar Bharat effect: India's HAL, BEL rise in rankings among top global arms manufacturers

New Delhi: India’s military equipment manufacturing companies Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) and Bharat Electronics (BEL) have made it to the list of top 100 companies making arms, weapons, military planes and equipment, once again.

In the fresh report namely ‘Top 100 arms-producing and military services companies 2021’, prepared by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Swedish think-tank, HAL and BEL have improved from being at 43rd and 69th position respectively to 42nd and 63rd in the 2021 list of.

The details of the report were released on Monday.

As per the report, the arms sales of Hindustan Aeronautics and Bharat Electronics have increased by 6.7 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively, over the last year.

“The total arms sales of the two Indian companies in the top 100 were $5.1billion (approximately Rs 40,000 crore) in 2021,” the SIPRI report said.

The SIPRI report claimed that both companies have gained benefits from major orders placed by the Indian armed forces in recent years.

It further added that Indian Ordnance Factories, which appeared in the 2020 list of the Top 100, was dropped out of the rankings due to its restructuring into seven smaller companies in October 2021.

In 2020, the Indian government announced a phased ban on imports of more than a hundred different types of military equipment.

The SIPRI report estimated the overall sales of arms and military services by the 100 largest companies globally as $592 billion in 2021, witnessing an increase of around 1.9 per cent.

US has topped the list followed by China, for the second successive year. The report claims that the combined arms sales of the eight Chinese companies included in the ranking amounted to $109 billion, a 6.3 per cent increase over last year.

The growth in arms sales reflects the height of modernisation of China’s military equipment and its objective to become self-reliant in the production of all categories of major arms.

As a result of this, four Chinese companies have been ranked in the top 10, the SIPRI report said. These companies are all state-owned enterprises producing both military and civilian products.

The 40 US companies in the listing gained around $299 billion in sales during 2021.

Seven of the eight Chinese companies increased their arms sales in 2021. NORINCO, a land systems specialist, clocked sales of $21.6 billion in 2021. AVIC (ranked 8th), CASC (ranked 9th) and CASIC (ranked 11th) are the three main Chinese arms companies that operate in the military aerospace sector. Of these three, CASIC’s arms sales grew the most, and were $14.5 billion in 2021.

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