Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), a company owned by India’s department of Defence Production, builds radars, command and control systems, and electro-optics primarily for India’s internal defense and security needs. Its head of Research and Development announced that starting in the next fiscal year, which begins in April 2011, the company will budget 8-10 percent of annual sales towards research and development. Historically the company has spent only 4-5 percent on R&D.
Also its sales are expected to rise dramatically as it partipates in India’s massive expansion of defense capability, and will likely be further spiked by future wins of Defense and civilian Offset work mandated by countertrade provisions of large scale foreign acquisitions. The India expert expects that absolute R&D expenditures could quadruple very rapidly due to this compounding effect.
