India's military spending up by 3.1% and Pakistan's 11% in '18: SIPRI report

New Delhi, April 29 (IANS) World's military expenditure increased by 2.6 per cent, reaching $1822 billion in 2018 with India along with United States, China, Saudi Arabia and France contributing 60 per cent of the amount, according to a latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).India's military spending went up by 3.1 percent to $66.5 billion while Pakistan's grew by 11 percent to reach $11.4 billion.The data, available on www.sipri.org, shows that spending by the US increased for the first time since 2010 and that of China went up for the 24th consecutive year. A big picture of global military spendings showed that it increased for the second year in a row to the highest level since 1988 until when the records are available.The global military spending is 2.1 percent of the world GDP. In India, the defence budget has remained less than 2 per cent of the GDP, according to independent assessments.The US spending went up by 4.6 per cent to reach $649 billion in 2018. The US share was at par with the money spent as the next eight largest spending countries together, said the report.China went 5 per cent more to reach $250 billion, which is 10 times higher than the amount spent by Beijing in 1994. It also represented 14 per cent of the world spending.
--IANS gd/prs