India's annual defence exports crossed a record ₹38,000 crore in FY 2025-26, a staggering 57-fold jump from ₹686 crore in FY 2013-14, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh announced on Saturday, 4 July. Speaking at a media event in New Delhi, Singh said the figures reflect growing global confidence in Make in India defence platforms and mark a decisive shift in the country's strategic manufacturing posture.

Defence Production at All-Time High

Alongside the export milestone, annual defence production reached an all-time high of ₹1.78 lakh crore in FY 2025-26 — exactly three times the output recorded in FY 2014-15. Singh framed the trajectory as a structural transformation rather than incremental growth, describing India's journey as 'a progression from shortages to self-reliance, from self-reliance to self-confidence, and from self-confidence towards building a Viksit Bharat.'

The minister also pushed back against early critics of the Make in India initiative, noting that when the scheme launched in 2014, 'certain quarters labelled it a failure' — a characterisation he said the data has since decisively refuted.

Semiconductor Breakthrough and Tech Manufacturing

Singh highlighted the India Semiconductor Mission, launched in 2021, as another example of scepticism giving way to results. He said India produced its first indigenous semiconductor chips last year, enabled by the establishment of semiconductor parks built on a 'plug-and-play' infrastructure model. The minister also pointed to growth in mobile manufacturing, automobile exports, and indigenously produced locomotives as further evidence of the Make in India programme's breadth.

Digital Infrastructure: UPI and 5G

On the digital front, Singh cited 22.35 billion UPI transactions processed in April alone, with a combined value of ₹29 lakh crore, and noted that UPI's international footprint is continuing to expand. He also underlined the rapid nationwide rollout of indigenously developed Make in India 5G technology, adding that development work on 6G is already under way.

GST as a Model of Cooperative Federalism

Singh additionally flagged the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as a policy success story, arguing that despite initial concerns at launch, it has since evolved into what he described as a model of cooperative federalism by strengthening fiscal coordination between the Centre and states and union territories.

What the Numbers Signal

The defence export surge places India among the world's fastest-growing arms exporters by growth rate, though its absolute volumes remain a fraction of top-tier exporters. Notably, the 57x rise in exports over roughly a decade represents one of the sharpest peacetime defence-industrial pivots among major democracies. The government's third-term policy framework — described by Singh as 'Reform, Perform, Transform' — is being positioned as the launchpad for what officials project will be a 'developed India' by the fourth term. Sectoral observers will be watching whether export momentum translates into deeper supply-chain indigenisation and not merely assembly-level localisation.