NEW DELHI: Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh has said that the defence budget would go up by 9.5 percent from the current Rs 6.21 lakh crores to Rs 6.81 lakh crores in 2025-26.

Rajesh Kumar Singh said, "The current year's defence budget was Rs 6.21 lakh crores, which will go up by 9.5 percent to Rs 6.81 lakh crores in 2025-26. We should be spending 30 billion dollars per annum over the next decade as part of modernisation. Out of this capex budget, 75 percent is earmarked for procurement from domestic sources and 25 percent of this is earmarked for domestic private industry."

He further said that relaxation in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy and industrial licensing procedure are other elements that will propel the growth in the defence industry.

He further said that the total value of domestic production in India has reached 1.27 lakh crores in 2023-24 and exports have increased to 21,000 crores which is 30X jump in last 10 years.

"It's very obvious that the defence industry in India is at the cusp of a massive expansion. The current industrial ecosystem of India, which comprises 16 defence PSUs, 430 licensed companies and around 16,000 MSMEs, is the pillar of this expanding industrial base. Our focus has to be on reducing the entry barriers, as I had mentioned earlier, for new players and for new technologies so that our defence industrial ecosystem becomes adaptive, agile and capable of responding quickly to the changing nature of future warfare, as we have seen in recent geopolitical conflicts," he further said.

Earlier Rajesh Kumar Singh on Monday said India would be looking with an "open mind" to US President Donald Trump's offer to sell F-35 fighter jets to India.