India has emerged as the third biggest defense spender, according to SIPRI.
Meanwhile, global military spending increased by 2.6% to $1.981 trillion in 2020, with the United States, China, India, Russia and the United Kingdom topping the list, data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed on Monday.
“The 2.6 percent increase in world military spending came in a year when the global gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by 4.4 percent, … largely due to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, military spending as a share of GDP – the military burden – reached a global average of 2.4 per cent in 2020, up from 2.2 per cent in 2019.
This was the biggest year-on-year rise in the military burden since the global financial and economic crisis in 2009,” the report said.
In 2020, the five biggest military spenders together accounted for 62 percent of global military expenditure.
According to SIPRI, nearly all NATO member states have also increased their military burden in 2020.
“Although more NATO members spent more than 2 percent of GDP on their militaries in 2020, in some cases this probably had more to do with the economic fallout of the pandemic than a deliberate decision to reach the Alliance’s spending target,” SIPRI researcher Lopes da Silva said as quoted in the report.
The SIPRI, founded in 1966, is an independent think tank focused on research into conflicts, arms and arms control and disarmament.
Turkey's military spending fell in 2020
Turkey's military spending fell by five percent in 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) annual report.
On Monday, SIPRI released its report that showed Turkish spending on its military fell to about 17.7 billion dollars, representing about 2.8 percent of Turkey's gross domestic product (GDP). Turkey's spending on the military as a whole has gone up nearly an entire percentage point in the last decade, but SIPRI notes 2020 was an exception to an overall trend of Turkey raising its defence budget.
