Data | India reduced arms imports from Russia, while China’s dependency increased

India’s arms imports have reduced significantly in the last five years (2017-2021). This is the first such drop after the country recorded a consistent increase for all the five-year periods beginning 1991. Russia has been the most preferred source for India’s defence purchases since at least the 2000s. The exception was 2021 when France replaced Russia as India’s primary source. Despite this deviation, Russia has fulfilled over 46% of India’s defence needs in the last five years. India, China, Egypt, Iraq, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Syria, Algeria and Vietnam were the main importers of arms from Russia in the 2017-2021 period. Among these countries, only India and Vietnam have reduced their dependency on Russia compared to the 2012-2016 period. The rest have, in fact, increased their dependency on Russia.

 Drop in imports

The chart shows India’s arms imports in five-year periods. The total imports fell from $19,432 million SIPRI* Trend Indicator Value (TIV) to $15,356 million TIV. The TIV is based on the unit production costs of a core set of weapons and is intended to represent the transfer of military resources rather than the financial value of the transfer. It is a common unit that measures trends in the flow of arms

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Preferred source

The chart shows India’s arms imports from various sources in million TIV. Russia was India’s chief source for arms in all years, except for 2021. The chart only lists the trend of India’s top five sources since 2000

Dependency ratio

The chart plots on the horizontal axis a country’s arms imports from Russia. Russia’s share in a country’s total imports is plotted on the vertical axis for the 2017-2021 period. For instance, India imported 7,068 TIV in this period from Russia, which formed 46% of its total arms imports. At least 14 countries are sourcing more than 50% of their arms needs from Russia

Change in dependency

The chart plots on the vertical axis a country’s arms imports from Russia in the 2017-2021 period. The horizontal axis plots the change in a country’s dependency on Russia between the 2012-2016 and 2017-2021 periods. India’s dependency on Russia decreased by 22% points between the two periods, whereas China’s dependency increased by 28% points

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

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