StatsGuru: 16-June-2014

Taking stock of the nation's spending on defence

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As the new government's first Budget approaches, and as the prime minister visited INS Vikramiditya on Saturday, it is worth evaluating the position of India's defence spending. As Table 1 shows, defence expenditure on the revenue account has gone down sharply as a proportion of total spending. As Table 2 shows, defence capital expenditure has, on the other hand, become an increasing part of the government's capital expenditure. Put together, as Table 3 shows, it is a smaller and smaller proportion of total government spending. Indeed, as Table 4 underlines, it is also an ever smaller proportion of GDP.

A lot of that capital expenditure goes on arms for the army. As Table 5 shows, the army gets almost half. It is also valuable to note that India is, in fact, the largest arms importer in the world, as Table 6 shows. As Table 7 reveals, the imports come overwhelmingly from Russia. But, as Table 8 shows, there has been a dip in the amount of Indian money spent on arms imports, too.