Global military spending rose despite a pandemic
Global military expenditure rose by 2.6% to $1.98 trillion last year even as some defence funds were reallocated to fight the pandemic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a report issued on Monday. The five biggest spenders in 2020, which together accounted for 62% of military spending worldwide, were the US, China, India, Russia and Britain in that order. “We can say with some certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020,” SIPRI researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said.
STOCKHOLM: Global military expenditure rose by 2.6% to $1.98 trillion last year even as some defence funds were reallocated to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report issued on Monday.
The five biggest spenders in 2020, which together accounted for 62% of military spending worldwide, were the US, China, India, Russia and Britain.
“We can say with some certainty that the pandemic did not have a significant impact on global military spending in 2020,” SIPRI researcher Diego Lopes da Silva said.
As global gross domestic product (GDP) declined because of the Covid-19 pandemic, military spending as a share of the GDP reached a global average of 2.4% in 2020 - going up from 2.2% in 2019.
However, some countries such as Chile and South Korea redirected part of their planned military spending to their pandemic response. Several others including Brazil and Russia spent considerably less than their initial military budgets for 2020.
US military expenditure reached an estimated $778 billion last year, 4.4% more than in 2019. With the world’s biggest defence budget, the US accounted for 39% of total global military expenditure in 2020.
China’s military expenditure, the second highest in the world, is estimated to have totalled $252 billion in 2020, a rise of 1.9% from the previous tear.