India, Pakistan among five largest arms recipients in five years: Report

Five countries together accounted for 35 per cent of the total arms import between 2020 and 2024, and among these is India, according to a report by Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The report comes even as India is striving to achieve self-reliance in defence manufacturing, moving away from being a largely import-dependent military force to one increasingly focused on self-reliance and indigenous production. 

 

The five largest arms recipients during the five-year period were Ukraine, India, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the SIPRI Yearbook 2025 revealed.

 

While Ukraine’s arms imports increased nearly 100 times compared to the 2015–19 period owing to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, China saw its arms imports decline by two-thirds between 2015–19 and 2020–24. China, which has been among the top weapon recipients for decades, managed to reduce dependency on imports as it expanded its domestic weapons production capabilities, the report pointed out. Beijing is now among the top five countries supplying arms.

READ MORE: India, Pakistan increasing nuclear weapons capability, says SIPRI

The top five arms suppliers—the US, France, Russia, China and Germany—together accounted for 71 per cent of the supplies during the aforementioned period. The arms exports by the US increased by 21 per cent during the period, with its share of global arms exports going up from m 35 to 43 per cent, coinciding with Russia's exports halving to "a level far below any previous five-year period in its history (or in any previous five-year period since 1950 for its predecessor, the Soviet Union)."

 

"Known plans for deliveries of major arms over the next few years strongly indicate that the USA will remain unchallenged as the world’s largest arms supplier for the foreseeable future," the report said.

 

The region that received the largest volume of major arms in 2020–24 was Asia and Oceania. Countries in Asia and Oceania accounted for 33 per cent of all global arms transfers, followed by those in Europe (28 per cent), the Middle East (27 per cent), the Americas (6.2 per cent) and Africa (4.5 per cent), the report noted.

 

Defence