The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released a new report on world military expenditures. According to the report, Armenia spent $609 million or 33 percent more in 2018 than in 2017.

Armenia's military budget has almost doubled in the span of 2008 to 2018. In 2008, it was roughly $247 million.

In 2018, the country’s military spending equalled to roughly $489, while in 2019, the draft budget plans to allocate $620 million to defense spending.

Armenia is among the top ten countries with the largest military burden on the GDP, at 4.8 percent. The report explains that a state’s military expenditure as a share of GDP—also known as the military burden— is the simplest measure of the relative economic burden the military places on that state.

Six out of ten countries with the highest military burden in the world in 2018 are in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia (8.8 percent of GDP), Oman (8.2 percent), Kuwait (5.1 percent), Lebanon (5.0 percent), Jordan (4.7 percent) and Israel (4.3 percent). The other four are Algeria (5.3 percent), Armenia (4.8 percent), Pakistan (4.0 percent) and Russia (3.9 percent).

Armenia’s neighbor Iran has cut military expenditures by about 10 percent, spending $13.2 billion.

Turkey has increased its military spending by 24 percent in the last year, reaching $19 billion. The country was included in the top 15 countries with the highest military expenditure in 2018.

According to SIPRI, 2018 has seen the highest figure for registered military expenditures in the world since 1988.