What are the Government’s recent moves to further liberalise the economy in the sectors like defence and mining?
The government has taken steps to indigenise defence production by banning the import of some weapons and platforms while hiking foreign direct investment into the sector.
In the defence sector, the FDI limits through automatic route has been increased to 74% from 49% at present. However the sector can receive 100% FDI under approval route.
Moreover, the government would bring a negative list and the weapons listed under the list would have to necessarily be produced domestically and cannot be imported.
The coal and mineral mining would attract the private sector with revenue sharing model and this would bring competition, efficiency and transparency in the whole process.
The government would backoff from the non strategic sectors and all such sectors would be privatized.
Private participation would also be included in space and the facilities of ISRO could also be used by Tech-Entrepreneurs.
These are some of the initiatives under Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package, which seemed to focus more on industry reforms than any sort of economic stimulus.
However, these policies will be rolled out over a 3-6 month period, and any implication for supporting or reviving the economy looks missing.