[ad_1]
Stockholm – US and Chinese companies dominated the global arms market in 2019, while the Middle East first appeared among the top 25 arms manufacturers, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday. .
The US arms industry accounted for 61 percent of the sales of the world’s “25 largest manufacturers” last year, ahead of China (15.7 percent), according to the institute.
Total sales for the “Big 25 Manufacturers” increased 8.5 percent to $ 361 billion, or 50 times the annual budget for UN Peacekeeping Operations.
Six US companies and three Chinese companies ranked among the top 10 arms companies. In this ranking, only one European company was located, the British BAE Systems, which ranked seventh.
For the first time, a Middle Eastern company was included in the list of the top 25 companies, namely Edge, which is based in the United Arab Emirates.
“This arrangement reflects the fact that China and the United States are the two largest countries in terms of global arms spending,” Lucy Piraud-Soudreau, director of the institute’s military spending and arms program, told AFP.
The United States has dominated the market for decades, but for China, which increased the sales of its companies by about five percent in 2019, “this increase is consistent with the implementation of reforms to modernize the People’s Liberation Army, which are in place since 2015, “he said.
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics of the United States took the top five positions, while the Chinese companies AVIC, CITC and Norinco took the sixth, eighth and ninth places. L3 Harris Technologies was ranked 10th.
Perrod-Soudrow noted that Europe is still in a mixed order. But if European companies were grouped together, there could be European companies the same size as the American and Chinese manufacturers.
