Larsen & Toubro
Larsen & ToubroReuters File

Engineering and construction conglomerate Larsen & Toubro is expecting to bag defence contracts worth Rs. 21,000 crore for the financial year 2016-17. The company also hopes the order amount to grow to Rs. 50,000 crore by 2019.

The company, which also has businesses in the finance and information technology sectors, is expecting orders in four areas of defence: guns and armoured vehicles, submarines, communications and ships, Mint reports.

"We are chasing a market of over Rs. 80,000 crore, and we are hopeful that we will secure at least Rs. 50,000 crore worth of orders," Jayant Patil, senior VP and head of Defence and Aerospace, said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

In terms of revenue inflows for the company, Patil said: "This year we expect some sizeable orders, at least crossing $3 billion, we should be booking in the year that begins April 1. So, the next financial year, we see at least close to Rs. 20,000-21,000 crore coming in. That should actually get us sizeable revenues."

Patil also said the BJP government had cleared defence orders worth Rs. 2.4 lakh crore in the last two years.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hiked the country's defence budget to Rs. 2.58 lakh crore for the 2016-17 fiscal. The defence budget represented a total of 17.2 percent of the total central government's expenditure.

India has become the world's fourth-largest spender on defence, following a 13.1 percent increase in its 2016-17 defence budget, according to a report by IHS Inc, a leading global source of information and insight. India has climbed from the sixth position last year.

[1 lakh = 100,000 | 1 crore = 10 million | 100 crore = 1 billion]