The world's second-largest standing army is woefully short on ammunition and there hasn't been a remarkable change in the last few years, the country's top auditor told parliament on Friday.

The CAG report said, of the 152 types of ammunition used by the military, availability of 55 per cent types was below the minimum inescapable requirement for operational preparedness.

For another 40 per cent types of ammunitions, the army had a stock of less than 10 days.

A Rs. 16,500 crore plan drawn up by the defence ministry in 2013 that targetted wiping the shortages by 2019 hasn't taken off yet. "We noticed that no case had culminated into the contract," the Comptroller and Auditor General's report said.

It also pointed that the deficiency of fuzes - fitted to an artillery shell just before firing - had declined from 89 per cent in 2013 by just six percentage points. This means the army still can't use 83 per cent of ammunition for tanks and artillery.

There was no immediate comment from the government on the audit report.