NEW DELHI: India’s Tata group and Airbus will make the C-295 transport aircraft in the country, the government said on Thursday, the first such production by a local private company amid a push for an expansion of defence manufacturing.

India, among the world’s largest defence importers, has been trying to cut its reliance on foreign firms and increase local output. Only state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd currently makes aircraft, mainly for the armed forces.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the new aircraft manufacturing project in his home state of Gujarat on Sunday. “This is the first project of its kind in which a military aircraft will be manufactured in India by a private company,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement. The project, valued at 219.35 billion rupees ($2.66 billion), involves the supply of 56 C-295 MW transport aircraft for the Indian Air Force.