India Is World's Third Largest Military Spender - Report

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, April 26 (Bernama) -- India is the world's third-largest military spender, behind only the United States and China, according to an international arms watchdog. India’s military spending rose 0.9 per cent to US$76.6 billion in 2021, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report on Monday. In a push to strengthen the indigenous arms industry, 64 per cent of capital outlays in the Indian military budget of 2021 were earmarked for buying domestically produced arms, it said. Total global military expenditure last year increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms to reach US$2.1 trillion, with the top five spenders -- the US, China, India, Britain and Russia, accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure. "Even amid the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, world military spending hit record levels," SIPRI senior researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said. "There was a slowdown in the rate of real-terms growth due to inflation. In nominal terms, however, military spending grew by 6.1 per cent," he added. US military spending was US$801 billion in 2021, showing a drop of 1.4 per cent from 2020, while China's rose 4.7 per cent to US$293 billion and Russia military expenditure increased by 2.9 per cent to US$65.9 billion last year, SIPRI said. -- BERNAMA