New Delhi [India], May 27 (ANI): Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday approved the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) Programme Execution Model, a key step to boost India's indigenous defence capabilities and strengthen the domestic aerospace industry, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in an official statement.

According to MoD's statement, in a significant push towards enhancing India's indigenous defence capabilities and fostering a robust domestic aerospace industrial ecosystem, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) Programme Execution Model.

The Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) is set to execute the programme through industry partnership.

The Execution Model approach provides equal opportunities to both the private and public sectors on a competitive basis. They can bid either independently or as a joint venture, or as consortia. The entity/bidder should be an Indian company compliant with the laws and regulations of the country, the statement said.

This is an important step towards harnessing the indigenous expertise, capability and capacity to develop the AMCA prototype, which will be a major milestone towards Aatmanirbharta in the aerospace sector.

ADA will shortly issue an Expression of Interest (EoI) for the AMCA Development Phase, the statement added.

Following the announcement, the stock markets reacted strongly to the development, with shares of defence and related companies rising by around 6 per cent at the time of reporting.

The stocks of defense and allied sectors such as Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL), Cochin Shipyard, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), Bharat Dynamics (BDL), BEML, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders (MDL), Ideaforge Technology and Bharat Electronics, Apollo Micro Systems, Paras Defence and Space Technologies were up between 1 to 6 per cent.

Following the news, the Nifty India Defence index reached 8,674.05, a fresh 52-week high. (ANI)