Over $9 billion was poured into military expenditure by the Colombian government in 2010, a report from a Swedish think tank found.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s annual report showed that military expenditure in the Andean nation has been steadily increasing since data was first collected in 1988, with the amount doubling over the last decade from $4.73 billion in 2000 to $9.19 billion in 2010.
The figure for 2010 also represents a 7.2% increase on the $8.57 billion spent in 2009. However, in terms of the percentage of GDP, the amount fell from 3.7% of GDP in 2009, to 3.25% in 2010 based on figures from the CIA World Fact Book.
In comparison, the U.S. spent a total of $687 billion in 2010, accounting for around 4.7% of GDP while Colombia’s neighbor Venezuela poured $3.1 billion into military expenditure in 2010, only a third of the amount of Colombia and down from its 2009 figure of $4.27 billion.
Venezuela’s GDP for 2010 was also slightly higher at $285.2 billion compared to Colombia’s $283.1 billion, thus also making its percentage of military expenditure lower.