Friday, April 17, 2015

Hey, Big Spender...

Algeria and Angola are the biggest military spenders in Africa, according to a report on trends in global military expenditures released on April 13, 2015, by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The report indicates that rapid increases in military expenditures in both Algeria and Angola are due to the countries’ high oil revenues. Since 2005, Algeria and Angola are reported to have increased their expenditures by 12 percent and 6.7 percent respectively to $11.9 billion and $6.8 billion.

Since 2005, Algeria’s expenditure on military armament has tripled, according to the report, and it now spends more than 5 percent of its GDP on its military. In March 2014, SIPRI published a separate report  on arms, which found that Algeria was the leading importer of arms in Africa (accounting for 36 percent of total imports), with Morocco in second place (22 percent) from 2009 to 2013.


The United States still leads the world in military expenditures, to the tune of $610 billion in 2014, triple the amount spent by China, which occupies second position with $216 billion. Russia comes in third at $84.5 billion. Saudi Arabia, occupies the fourth position in the world with an estimated $84.5 billion in expenditures, a 112 percent increase since 2005.

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