India outranks Saudi Arabia to become world's fourth-largest defence spender

Global defence spending stands at a whopping $1.57 trillion

Spending a whopping $50.6 billion on defence in 2016, India has become one of the world's top-five defence spenders.

Eclipsing Saudi Arabia and Russia, India now has the world's fourth-largest defence budget, according to the 2016 Jane’s Defence Budgets Report, released by research firm IHS Markit on December 12.

While the United States, China and the United Kingdom secured the top three spots respectively, the report suggested that India was likely to surpass  the UK by 2018 to become the world's third-largest defence spender.

“Procurement spending has been constrained in India over the last three years as personnel costs have increased,” IHS Jane’s principal analyst Craig Caffrey said in a statement. “However, what we expect to see from 2017 onwards is a military focused on modernisation. India needs new equipment. Over the next three years, India will re-emerge as a key growth market for defence suppliers.”

While Saudi Arabia secured fifth spot, Russia slipped to sixth. This year, total global defence spending increased to $1.57 trillion.

Here are the 10 nations with the highest defence budgets for 2016:

Since Narendra Modi took charge as India's prime minister in May 2014, his government has taken several measures to improve India's defence. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India remained the biggest importer of major arms, spending $3.078 billion accounting for 14% of the total, as compared to Pakistan, whose arms imports in 2015 declined, accounting for 3.3% of global arms imports at $735 million.

In August this year, India expressed willingness to spend over $223 billion over the next ten years to procure a multitude of weapons. In September, India signed a deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets from France for close to 7.8 billion euros ($8.7 billion), the country’s first major acquisition of fighter planes in over two decades.

This article originally appeared on Quartz India.