India boosted defence spending by 12 percent in 2014-15 over the previous year in a budget presented on Thursday and further opened the domestic weapons industry to foreign investment to help rebuild the military and narrow the gap with China, according to Reuters. India has been the world's top arms buyer for the last three years, trying to replace an ageing Soviet-era military with modern weapons as a deterrent to a rising China, with which it fought a war more than half a century ago. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley set the military budget at 2.29 trillion Indian rupees ($38.35 billion) for 2014-15, 50 billion rupees more than what the previous government agreed in an interim budget earlier this year. Defence expenditure for 2013/14 was kept at 2.04 trillion rupees. "Modernisation of the armed forces is critical to enable them to play their role effectively in the defence of India's strategic interests," he said to the thumping of desks in the lower house of parliament, where he presented the new government's first budget.
