NEW DELHI: India announced a double-digit increase in its annual defence budget Wednesday with an eye on its increasingly assertive geopolitical rival China, with which it shares a tense and disputed northern border.
New Delhi – already the world’s third-biggest military spender according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – will increase its expenditure to $73 billion, a 13 percent rise, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told parliament in her budget announcement.
Relations between the world’s two most populous countries are strained over border, trade and technology disputes, and India has tried to decouple itself from Chinese supply chains since a deadly frontier military clash in Ladakh in 2020.
