India’s 4th largest military spender in 2023, global defence spending up by 7%: All about SIPRI findings

🔴 Global military expenditure grew 7 per cent to $2.43 trillion in 2023, the steepest annual rise since 2009 as international peace and security deteriorated.

🔴 United States, China and Russia were the top spenders in 2023.

🔴 Military spending by the USA rose by 2.3 per cent to reach $916 billion in 2023, representing 68 per cent of total NATO military spending.

🔴 China, the world’s second largest military spender, allocated an estimated $296 billion to the military in 2023, an increase of 6.0 per cent from that in 2022. This was the 29th consecutive year-on-year rise in China’s military expenditure. China accounted for half of total military spending across the Asia and Oceania region.

🔴 Russia raised spending by 24 per cent to an estimated $109 billion, marking a 57 per cent rise since 2014, the year that Russia annexed Crimea. It made up 16 per cent of total government spending.

🔴 The eighth largest spender in 2023, Ukraine increased spending by 51 per cent to $65 billion and received at least $35 billion in military aid from other countries. This gave Ukraine a military burden of 37 per cent and represented 58 per cent of total government spending. The US aid and Ukraine’s own military spending combined were equivalent to about 91 per cent of Russian spending.

🔴 The US raised it by 2 per cent to $916 billion, representing around two-thirds of total NATO military spending.

🔴 Most European NATO members had boosted, with collective spending up to $1.3 trillion, with member countries’ spending totalling 55 per cent of the world’s expenditure.

🔴 War and tensions in the Middle East fuelled the biggest spending increase of past decade, with estimated military expenditure in the region up by 9 per cent to $200 billion in 2023.

🔴 Israel’s military spending—the second largest in the region after Saudi Arabia—grew by 24 per cent to reach $27.5 billion in 2023. The spending increase was mainly driven by Israel’s large-scale offensive in Gaza in response to the attack on southern Israel by Hamas in October 2023.

🔴 Iran was the fourth largest military spender in the Middle East in 2023 with $10.3 billion. According to available data, the share of military spending allocated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps grew from 27 percent to 37 percent between 2019 and 2023.

🔴 Japan allocated $50.2 billion to its military in 2023, which was 11 per cent more than in 2022. Taiwan’s military expenditure also grew by 11 per cent in 2023, reaching $16.6 billion.

🔴 Military spending against organised crime in Central America and the Caribbean in 2023 pushed up military spending by 54 per cent than in 2014.

🔴 Military spending by the Dominican Republic rose by 14 per cent in 2023 in response to worsening gang violence in neighbouring Haiti.

🔴 In Mexico, military expenditure reached $11.8 billion in 2023, a 55 per cent increase from 2014 (but a 1.5 per cent decrease from 2022). Allocations to the Guardia Nacional (National Guard)— a militarised force used to curb criminal activity — rose from 0.7 per cent of Mexico’s total military expenditure in 2019, when the force was created, to 11 per cent in 2023.

🔴 The largest percentage increase in military spending by any country in 2023 was seen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (+105 percent), where there has been protracted conflict between the government and non-state armed groups.

🔴 Poland’s military spending, the 14th highest in the world, was $31.6 billion after growing by 75 per cent between 2022 and 2023 — by far the largest annual increase by any European country.

🔴 In 2023, Brazil’s military spending increased by 3.1 per cent to $22.9 billion.