India's defense exports reached an all-time high of 160 billion Indian rupees (1.94 billion U.S. dollars) during the 2022-23 fiscal year (April 2022-March 2023), data released by the Defense Ministry on Saturday showed.

The figure represents an increase of about 30 billion Indian rupees (US$365 million) over the previous fiscal year, and a more than 10-fold increase since 2016-2017.

"India now exports to more than 85 countries, and Indian industry has shown its design and development capability to the world, with 100 companies exporting defense products at present," the ministry said in a statement.

In order to boost the export of defense products, in the past five to six years, the Indian government has taken a number of policy initiatives and implemented reforms, including simplifying export procedures and making the industry more convenient to do business while completing the end-to-end online export licensing process to reduce of delay.