BEL plans Rs 570-cr capex for modernisation

01 October 2008

Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) is planning a capital expenditure of Rs570 crore spread over the next two years to be invested in modernising all its nine manufacturing plants in the country.

The proposed capital expenditure will be over and above its new projects. This year its budget for modrnisation is Rs260 crore, up from the Rs120 core last year. It plans to spend an estimated Rs360 crore in 2009-10.

BEL is now trying to further modernise its plants, to strengthen its contract manufacturing for foreign companies; it has already signed MoUs with global defence equipment suppliers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, EADS and Northrop Grumman for opportunities arising out of defence offsets in the aerospace sector.

BEL has also signed MoU with Israeli firm Elisra, for airborne electronic warfare programmes for the Indian defence services and with IAI-Malat for unmanned aerial vehicles, aqpart from having signed a term sheet with Rafael, for a joint venture for missile electronics and guidance technology systems.

BEL's forte is its strong R&D spread across the 9 units as well as the two central research laboratories at Delhi and Bangalore and last year, 83 per cent of the turnover was accrued from products using indigenous technology.

BEL had invested Rs8 crore to modernise of its mass manufacturing facility which produces electronic voting machines (EVMs) recently, and yesterday announced that it would supply over one lakh electronic voting machines to the election commission for the forthcoming assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Sikkim and for the forthcoming parliamentry elections in 2009, in an order valued at Rs100 crore.