India spent $63.9 billion (more than Rs 4.2 lakh crore) on its military in 2017, 5.5% more than its expenditure in 2016, the Stockholm International Peace Research organisation said in a report released on Wednesday. India now stands fifth on the world’s biggest military spenders list, behind the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Global military spending rose to $1.73 trillion (more than Rs 115 lakh crore) in 2017, an increase of 1.1% since 2016. The five biggest spenders in 2017 together accounted for 60% of the total, according to the report.

The continuing increase in military expenditure is a cause for serious concern and it undermines the search for peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world, the organisation’s chairman Jan Eliasson told AP.

Military spending in 2017 represented 2.2% of global gross domestic product, the report said. In 2017, India’s military spending was 2.5% of its GDP. However, India’s spending on its military does not include deploying state-of-the-art equipment for the defence forces.

The rise in the expenditure mostly goes towards paying salaries and pensions for roughly 14 lakh serving personnel and more than 2 lakh veterans, Laxman Kumar Behera of Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses told Bloomberg. “Because so much money is consumed by manpower costs, there isn’t enough left over to buy equipment,” Behera added.

China, the biggest military spender in Asia, spent $228 billion (more than Rs 15 lakh crore) in 2017.

“Tensions between China and many of its neighbours continue to drive the growth in military spending in Asia,” said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure programme. Russia’s expenditure on its military fell for the first time since 1998 and it could have a direct impact on procurement and the country’s operations, Wezeman told Reuters.