Covering the period April 1964 to March 1969 to which I had made a reference during the debate on the demands for grants of the defence ministry in march, 1964. There was also a long-standing invitation form the U.S. defence secretary to visit the U.S. to discuss problems of mutual interest. I also received later an invitation from the defence minister of I took this opportunity to discuss with the soviet government various matters connected with the implementation of our defence plan. The task or re-equipping and modernizing our armed forces is a very stupendous one in order to ensure systematic development of our defence potential in the light of the threat facing the country earlier this year, we prepared a five year defence plan. The programmes of modernization of the defence forces and improvement of facilities for logisitc support of the armed forces would call for additional outlays on defence. The increase, in terms of internal resources, will be of the order of about 10 to 12 per cent over the current level of defence expenditure. But the total requirement of foreign exchange for the defence plan has been assessed at about three times the normal allocations which can be made to defence from our own export earnings. The major constraint, therefore, which would affect the implementation of the defence plan is the availability of foreign exchange in time, to meet the import requirements of the various constituents of the plan. As the economic development plans also require heavy investments of foreign exchange in order to ensure that the progress of India's economic development is not affected, it is necessary to secure assistance from friendly foreign countries for the implementation of the defence plan. I reached Washington on may 18,1964, and had discussions with the U.S. secretary of defence.
