The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has removed India from the world’s top 25 largest arms exporter list, despite the country selling more weapons globally.
India is now exporting more defense hardware to South-East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, but it has surprisingly lost its position as a major defense exporter as certified by the highly respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) of Sweden.
The “value of defense exports” by India over the last five years was INR 4,682 crore in 2017-18, INR 10,746 crore in 2018-19, INR 9,116 crore in 2019-20, INR 8,435 crore in 2020-21, and INR 12,815 crore in 2021-22. 2022-23 stood at INR 13,399 crore on March 14.
So much so that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes that his government’s efforts will lead to a further five-fold increase in India’s annual defense exports to INR 35,000 crore (US$5 billion) by 2024-25, up from approximately US$1.5 billion presently.
India is said to be exporting to 85 countries a wide range of systems that include helicopters, patrol vessels, personnel protective gear, surveillance systems, radars, and various components.
And yet, the SIPRI has edged out India from the list of the 25 largest exporters of arms — a league it broke into in 2015-19 with a 0.2 percent share of the global exports.
In the previous year’s SIPRI report, India was ranked 23rd largest exporter above Brazil and Portugal, though all three had an equal share of 0.2 percent. It was also the highest share India managed to garner before bowing out of the league in this year’s report.
That India continues to be the largest importer of arms in the world, according to SIPRI, a league India would instead like to come out of, is a different story. SIPRI lists India as the largest importer of arms for 2018-22.
According to the sources familiar with the matter, Putin is sending U.S. weapons to Iran for reverse engineering.
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