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Global military spending soars despite crisis: report

02 June 2010 13:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA-Economics. Global military expenditures soared to a record high last year, unscathed by the economic downturn, with the United States accounting for more than half of increase, a think tank said Wednesday, AFP reported.

In 2009, 1,531 billion dollars (1,244 billion euros) were spent worldwide in the military sector, a 5.9 percent rise from 2008 and a 49 percent jump from 2000, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its report.

The United States remains by far the top military spender, dishing out 661 billion dollars to the industry in 2009, or a whopping 43 percent of the total global military expenditure. China is believed to be the world’s second largest military spender, the institute said, adding that while it did not have access to the official figures from Beijing it estimated the country had spent around 100 billion dollars in the sector last year.

With its 63.9 billion dollars in military expenditures last year, France came in third place, SIPRI said. Wednesday’s SIPRI report also estimated that there were around 8,100 operational nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the world’s eight nuclear-armed states: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel.