Monitoring Desk
NEW DELHI: India announced a double-digit hike in its annual defence budget on Wednesday with eyes on its increasingly powerful geopolitical rival China, with which it shares a disputed and tense northern border.
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget announcement, told parliament that the government would increase its expenditure to 73 billion US dollars, a 13 percent rise.
Relations between the two most populous countries of the world are strained over border, trade, and technology disputes. India has tried to decouple itself from the supply chains of China since a deadly frontier military clash in Ladakh in 2020.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP government has been strengthening its military, including its armaments industry and border defences, with a nuclear-powered submarine of its own, and also launched its first locally made aircraft carrier last year.
India still relies on Russia for arms
India still relies on Russia for most of its arms imports — other suppliers include Israel, the US, and France — and the finance minister told parliament the government was committed to enhancing self-reliance in military equipment.
She added that domestic procurement would go up by ten percentage points to 68 percent.
The defence allocation is more than 13 percent of the total government budget, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted.
