India among top five countries on military spending: Report

The militaries of India and China have been in a border standoff in eastern Ladakh for the last 23 months following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas

India has emerged as one of the top five countries on military spending in 2021 even as the world military expenditure crosses the $2 trillion mark for the first time, according to a European institute that keeps track of arms sales around the world.

The five largest spenders were the USA, China, India, the UK, and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, says the latest report on global military spending by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released on Monday.

India’s military spending of $76.6 billion has been ranked third highest in the world. This was up by 0.9 per cent from 2020 and by 33 per cent from 2012.

The Narendra Modi government spent 2.7 per cent of its GDP on military in 2021 – a marginal rise from its defence expenditure a decade ago.

For comparison, this year’s Economic Survey shows that the government’s spending on education was 2.8 per cent of GDP in 2019-20, which has been raised to 3.1 per cent in the revised budgetary estimate of 2020-21 and budgetary estimate of 2021-22.

The spending on the health sector was even lower. In 2019-20, the expenditure was 1.3 per cent of GDP that rose to 1.8 per cent in 2020-21 (revised estimate) and 2.1 per cent in 2021-22 (budgetary estimate) due to additional pumping of resources to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic.

The SIPRI report says amid ongoing tensions and border disputes with China and Pakistan that occasionally spill over into armed clashes, India has prioritised the modernisation of its armed forces and self-reliance in arms production.

To strengthen the indigenous arms industry, 64 per cent of capital outlays in the 2021 Indian military budget were earmarked for acquisitions of domestically produced arms.

Last week, the defence ministry said India over-achieved the 64 per cent target and utilised 65.5 per cent of the capital acquisition budget on indigenous procurement by the end of 2021-22 fiscal.

India’s military spending, however, is almost ten times less than the USA that accounts for 38 per cent of the world’s expenditure. The USA is followed by China (14%), India (3.6%), UK (3.2%) and Russia (3.1%).

Russia increased its military expenditure by 2.9 per cent in 2021, to $65.9 billion, at a time when it was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border. It was the third consecutive year of growth and Russia’s military spending reached 4.1 per cent of GDP.

China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $293 billion to its military in 2021, an increase of 4.7 per cent from 2020 and 72 per cent from 2012. China’s military spending has grown for 27 consecutive years, which is the longest uninterrupted sequence of increases by any country in the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.

The military spending in Asia and Oceania totaled $586 billion in 2021. Spending in the region was 3.5 per cent higher than in 2020, continuing an uninterrupted upward trend dating back to at least 1989. The increase in 2021 was due primarily to growth in Chinese and Indian military spending. Together, the two countries accounted for 63 per cent of total military expenditure in the region in 2021.

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