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H S Rao in London
Faced with a brittle economy, Pakistan plans to undertake weapons exports in a big way to help its economic growth, a leading defence weekly has reported.
The government plans to boost its exports from the current $2 million per annum to $20 million per year in two years, the Jane's Defence Weekly reported, quoting Pakistan's director of policy.
The military establishment is confident that Pakistan is capable of manufacturing a large array of weapon systems ranging from small arms and ammunition to tanks, submarines and ballistic missiles for exports.
Most recently, Pakistan's main customers for 2001-02 were Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. However, it hopes that sales will materialise from several memorandum of understanding that have been signed with a number of countries, including Iran and Romania.
It also hopes to sell major weapon systems like the Agosta 90B submarine, mine hunters, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missile and gun boats, jet trainers and propeller driven aircraft to non-traditional customers like Algeria, Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Libya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
With these ambitions in mind, Islamabad has hosted two international exhibitions and is planning a third in September, the report said.
Islamabad has also established a Defence Export Promotion Organisation to provide impetus to its export objectives, the report said.
With an original goal of disposing of $1 billion worth of excess inventory, the DEPO, headed by Major General Ali Hamid not only represents the 17 public sector production units or departments, but also 32 private sector companies.
The DEPO plans to target a number of Persian Gulf and South Asian countries for the sales.
Countries like Egypt, Kuwait, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are considered traditional customers and viewed as potential buyers for equipment and services.
Despite these ambitions, Pakistan's indigenous arms manufacturing and export strategies have some inherent problems that will shackle efforts to significantly boost exports, the report said.
Placing Pakistan's average arms sale for the last decade at around $20 million, the report said after a high in 1998 when Pakistan Ordnance Factory, country's oldest defence production establishment, alone exported arms worth $35 million, the figures have dropped.
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