New Delhi: India ranked number three on the list of highest military spending after the US and China, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) mentioned in its latest report. India’s military spending of $76.6 billion ranked third highest in the world. This was up by 0.9 percent from 2020 and by 33 percent from 2012. In a push to strengthen the indigenous arms industry, 64 percent of capital outlays in the military budget of 2021 were earmarked for acquisitions of domestically produced arms.
US military spending amounted to $801 billion in 2021, a drop of 1.4 percent from 2020. The US military burden decreased slightly from 3.7 percent of GDP in 2020 to 3.5 percent in 2021. US funding for military research and development (R&D) rose by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, while arms procurement funding fell by 6.4 percent over the same period. In 2021 spending on both decreased. However, the drop in R&D spending (–1.2 percent) was smaller than that in arms procurement spending (–5.4 percent).
China, the world’s second-largest spender, allocated an estimated $293 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 percent compared with 2020. China’s military spending has grown for 27 consecutive years. The 2021 Chinese budget was the first under the 14th Five-Year Plan, which runs until 2025.
(Smit Soni)
