According to information posted by the Stockholm-based defence research tank SIPRI, India would have the third-highest military budget in the world in 2021, a government official claimed on Friday. Notably, the United States came in first, followed by China in second place, with India coming in third.
Ajay Bhatt, the Minister of State for Defence, provided the statistics in response to a query about India’s military budget in the Lok Sabha during the current monsoon session of Parliament.
He continued by stating that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) website data showed that India had the third-highest military spending in the world in the previous year, despite the Defence Ministry of India not collecting information on other nations’ expenditure figures.
Accordingly, Bhatt informed the House, citing SIPRI data:
“the US ranked first with an expenditure of USD 800,672.20 million, followed by China’s USD 293,351.90 million while the figure for India was USD 76,598.00 million.”
‘Domestic procurement of defence equipment witnesses a growth’: MoS Ajay Bhatt in Lok Sabha
The percentage of foreign procurement (both income and capital) made for the purchase of stores/military equipment has been in the range of 33.97 percent to 41.60 percent, he said in response to the issue of whether over 50% of defence equipment has been imported from 2017 to 2021. In addition, he mentioned that domestic purchases of defence equipment have increased over the last three years, rising from 54% in 2018–19 to 64% in 2020–21.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Nusrat Jahan Ruhi asked a number of questions in the Lok Sabha, and the MoS Defence responded with a series of responses.
Notably, the central government allotted Rs 84,598 crore, or 68% of its military budget, in the Union Budget presented in February of this year for the procurement of domestically produced weapons and systems in an effort to increase self-reliance in the sector. In addition, the Defence Budget set aside 25% for startups, academic institutions, and private business to support the development of military platforms.
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