New Delhi, November 2 — The Ministry of Defence on Monday signed contracts worth ₹53,866.50 crore with Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited (GRSE) and Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) for eight Next Generation Corvettes (NGCs) for the Indian Navy, the ministry said in an official statement. The contracts were signed at Kartavya Bhawan-2 in New Delhi in the presence of Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh.

Source: IANS

Under the contracts, GRSE Kolkata will construct five corvettes and GSL will build the remaining three. The ministry said the project marks a milestone in indigenous warship construction: it is the first project in which the ships will be designed by the Indian Navy itself and built by defence public sector undertakings chosen through a competitive process.

Source: The Hindu BusinessLine

₹53,866.50 croreTotal value of the two contracts signed on November 2
8Next Generation Corvettes for the Indian Navy
5 / 3Ships to be built by GRSE Kolkata / Goa Shipyard
5.32 crorePerson-days of employment projected over 10 years (72 lakh in shipyards + 460 lakh in ancillary industries and MSMEs)

What the new corvettes will do

The Next Generation Corvettes will carry advanced missiles, weapons and sensor suites and are designed for operations across the air, surface and sub-surface domains — including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface operations, coastal defence, littoral combat and maritime surveillance, according to the Defence Ministry statement reported by IANS and Nation Press.

Source: Nation Press (IANS)

The ministry said the project will strengthen India's domestic shipbuilding ecosystem by bringing together defence public sector companies, private shipyards and Indian industrial partners, including micro, small and medium enterprises, and is aligned with the government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India push in defence. Construction is expected to generate about 72 lakh person-days of employment in the shipyards and about 460 lakh person-days in ancillary industries and MSMEs over the next ten years.

From clearance to contract

Monday's signing is the contract stage of a decision readers have been following on this site: in October, the Defence Acquisition Council cleared capital acquisition proposals worth about ₹2.12 lakh crore, and last week the Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared this corvette project at an estimated value of over ₹40,000 crore, with officials saying the contracts would follow within days. The final signed value, ₹53,866.50 crore, is higher than that clearance-stage estimate. The ministry's statement does not announce a delivery schedule; at the clearance stage, officials had spoken of the first vessel being expected around 2030.

With the contracts now inked, work moves to the two yards — GRSE in Kolkata and GSL in Goa — which will build the eight ships to the Navy's own design. Delivery timelines are yet to be publicly specified.