India has been a big importer of defence equipment and has relied mostly on Russia, its biggest supplier of helicopters, submarines, BrahMos missiles, and more after which come France, and it is also importing from US from the past few years.
However, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative increasingly gained speed, India has reduced its dependency on arms import in the last decade. This has been a big shift in the defence strategy as, according to the Kotak Mutual Fund, India was the biggest importer of defence equipment in 2010 and was 11% of the global import of defence equipment. However, it has starkly come down to the 4th number as of 2024.
A lot has changed in the defence industry in India in the past decade as it has started manufacturing its own defence equipment which has been a big reason for declining import. India is now at number 4 along with countries like South Korea, Qatar, Australia and Saudi Arabia, all of which have 4% of the world’s total import.
On the contrary, India has increasingly exporting defence equipment in the past few years. Since 2017, a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 41% has been recorded in defence exports. In the same year, the exports stood at Rs 1,500 crore which increased to Rs 23,600 crore in 2024. The report concluded that the defence industry is increasingly becoming self-dependent.
Ukraine tops the list
According to the 2024 statistics, Ukraine is the biggest importer of arms and ammunitions due to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war which has raised demand for such equipment in the country which is a whopping 18% of the global arms import. With 9%, Pakistan was at number 2, Australia at 6% and South Korea at 5%. While USA, China, Saudi Arabia and Singapore each had 4% share of the global defence import and Algeria and Portugal each had 3% and the rest of the world had a share of 47%. As of today, Poland is on the second number after Ukraine with 5% of the global arms import.