Article Posted on : - Feb 15, 2012

SINGAPORE (AFP): China's defence budget will double between 2011 and 2015 and outstrip the combined spending of all other key defence markets in the Asia-Pacific region, global research group IHS has said.

China's defence budget stood at USD 119.8 billion last year and will rise to USD 238.2 billion in 2015, marking a combined annual growth rate of 18.75 per cent during the period, the US-based IHS said in a forecast, Tuesday.

The 2015 figure exceeds the combined total of the next 12 biggest defence budgets in the region, forecast to hit USD 232.5 billion, and will be almost four times second-placer Japan's defence spending that year, it added.

"Beijing has been able to devote an increasingly large portion of its overall budget towards defence and has been steadily building up its military capabilities for more than two decades," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist for IHS Global Insight.

"This will continue unless there is an economic catastrophe."

The growth in China's defence budget -- which averaged 12 percent annually from 2000-2009 -- will benefit from the projected surge in the gross domestic product of Asia's largest economy in the next three years.

China will use the additional cash to modernise its equipment while reducing its manpower, resulting in a higher amount of funding per member of its armed forces, IHS said in its report.

Aside from China and Japan, the report also tracks the military spending of India, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and New Zealand.

The US government's "renewed Asia-Pacific focus" is helping fuel China's expansion of its defence budget, according IHS Global Insight's Asia-Pacific head Sarah McDowall.