Washington: India’s weapons procurement from the United States jumped from meagre $ 6.2 million to a whopping $ 3.4-billion in the final year of the Donald Trump administration, according to official data.
The jump in sale of American weapons to India comes at a time when sale of weapons from the US to other countries has dipped to $ 50.8 billion in 2020 from $ 55.7 billion 2019.
In 2019, the sale of US weapons to foreign countries was $ 55.7 billion, according to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). In 2017, the sale of US weapons to other countries was $ 41.9 billion.
According to the statistics released by the DSCA, major buyers of American weapons in 2020 were India ($ 3.4 billion up from $ 6.2 million in fiscal year 2019), Morocco ($ 4.5 billion up from $ 12.4 million), Poland ($ 4.7 billion up from $ 673 million), Singapore ($ 1.3 billion up from $ 137 million), Taiwan ($ 11.8 billion up from $ 876 million), and the United Arab Emirates ($ 3.6 billion up from $ 1.1 billion).
Several countries reported drop in purchase of weapons from the US.
Prominent among them were Saudi Arabia which came down from $ 14.9 billion in 2019 to $ 1.2 billion in 2020, Afghanistan ($ 1.1 billion down from $ 1.6 billion), Belgium ($ 41.8 million down from $ 5.5 billion), Iraq ($ 368 million down from $ 1.4 billion), and South Korea ($ 2.1 billion down from $ 2.7 billion).
For Pakistan, the official figures reflected that sale of weapons under FMS did happen, even though there was a freeze in any military and security assistance from the Trump Administration. In 2020, US sale of weapons to Pakistan was $ 146 million.