According to official data, India’s weapons procurement from the United States jumped from meagre USD 6.2 million to a whopping USD 3.4-billion in the final year of the Donald Trump administration.
In 2019, the sale of US weapons to foreign countries was USD 55.7 billion, according to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). In 2017, the sale of US weapons to other countries was USD 41.9 billion.
According to the statistics released by the DSCA, major buyers of American weapons in 2020 were India (USD 3.4 billion up from USD 6.2 million in fiscal year 2019), Morocco (USD 4.5 billion up from USD 12.4 million), Poland (USD 4.7 billion up from USD 673 million), Singapore (USD 1.3 billion up from USD 137 million), Taiwan (USD 11.8 billion up from USD 876 million), and the United Arab Emirates (USD 3.6 billion up from USD 1.1 billion).
According to the 2020 edition of the Historical Sales Book, India purchased weapons worth USD 754.4 million in 2017 and USD 282 million in 2018. Between 1950 and 2020, US sale of weapons to India under Foreign Military Sales (FMS) category was USD 12.8 billion.
According to the Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs Clarke Cooper, fiscal 2020 saw a total of USD 175.8 billion in US government-authorised arms exports. This is overall a 2.8 per cent increase since fiscal year 2019.
The overall value of State Department-authorised government-to-government FMS cases implemented by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency decreased 8.3 per cent from USD55.39 billion in Fiscal Year 2019 to USD50.78 billion in Fiscal Year 2020.
