Alvi calls for modernising ordnance factories

ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi visited the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), Wah, on Thursday and urged the management to focus on research and development (R&D) as well as bringing innovation and modernisation.

The President also called for adopting the best practices to further improve its efficiency and productivity.

“The defence production sector has immense potential for growth which can be fully realised by continuously improving the capacity of its human resource and adopting emerging and critical technologies powered by Artificial Intelligence, virtual reality and robotics,” he remarked.

Dr Alvi underlined the need to employ modern marketing techniques and improve the efficiency of supply chain to consolidate Pakistan’s position in existing markets and increasing footprint in new and non-traditional markets by promoting Pakistani defence products which were of high quality, effective and dependable in any given situation, and were at the same time very cost-effective.

He appreciated the POF for its pivotal role in moving towards self-sufficiency and in meeting the growing demand of the country’s defence sector and civilian security agencies. He also lauded the POF for capturing foreign markets by improving its efficiency, adopting quality financial management practices and digitalising its processes to transform POF into a self-sustainable and progressive defence industrial complex.

President Alvi visited different parts of the POF where he was given an overview of the production and manufacturing processes. He took keen interest in different defence products manufactured at the POF, and were on display.

The President was briefed on the role of the POF in fulfilling the ammunition requirements of Pakistan’s armed forces and law enforcement agencies and steps taken by it to develop academia-industry linkages.