NEW DELHI. The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) chaired by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met in New Delhi May 22.

In continuation of its efforts to streamline defence procurement procedure (DPP) and to reduce timelines so as to ensure timely delivery of equipment to the Armed Forces, the DAC discussed and approved various measures to simplify the procurement procedure.

The measures will be incorporated in the DPP-16, the manual governing the defence procurement procedure. The significant changes inter-alia include devolution of powers within the Ministry of Defence and the Service Headquarters, concurrent running of the acquisition process instead of sequential stage clearance, deletion of repetitive processes, aligning of various documents with revised financial guidelines, among others.

These measures will go a long way in obviating undue procedural delays and will hasten activities besides shrinking procurement timelines.

The amendments also form part of the ongoing Business Process Re-engineering in Defence Capital procurement.