The Tenth French report on the weapons’ exports shows that the volume of the French weapons that have been delivered to Algeria since 2004 reaches 147.8 million euros, including war equipments worth 61.4 million euros in 2008.

• The same report reveals that the weapons’ demands by the Algerian Defense Ministry and security services from the French arms manufacturing companies reached 324 million euros since 2004.
• The volume of demands knew several changes from year to year, as they rang between 14.4 million euros in 2004 and 25.4 million euros in 2008, after it reached 184.8 million euros in 2007, as the total sale contracts that are licensed between France and Morocco reached over 305 million euros, compared to 112 million euros between Libya and France, and 33 million euros between Tunisia and France.
• Weapons’ trade used standards that are different from those of the civil trade, because the applications are subjected to a study before access to the license of export.
• The report also shows that the requests that have been rejected in the North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya), according to the geographical division that is adopted by the French Foreign Ministry, reached seven in 2007 and one in 2008, as the report did not reveal the name of the concerned countries.
• The French report on arms exports, which was published a few days ago in Paris, noted that the countries of the world spend currently 1000 billion euros in the military sector (hardware, maintenance and salaries of personnel), including 200 billion euros to buy arms.
• The activities of the arms trade are characterized by the a good relationship between the countries producers and the countries that seek to strengthen their defense forces through renewing their military arsenal.
• The international arms market, which is open for competition and race, reached the volume 55 billion euros, according to the latest statistics of 2007.
• The French experts, who prepared this report, think that growth of the international arms market is due to the countries which seek to renew their military arsenals, through buying arms with high quality and technology.
• The report adds that the changing nature of wars and military confrontations across the globe since the end of the last century, have led countries to renew their weapons and armies, through introducing hardware which go in line with the modern war strategies.
• The world arms market reached only 55 billion euros as the volume of sales during the last decade, before jumping to 67 billion euros, and this is due to the deflation of the old arms market which spread during the two past decades on the ruins of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist bloc countries, as these situations helped the emergence of a market parallel to the adopted one.
• Few countries which have a modern industrial base and control technology, dominated the world arms market, including the U.S. and some E.U. counties (Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden), as well as Russia and Israel. As they share 90% of the world arms market’s shares since 1998.
• The report by the French Defense Ministry shows that the U.S. is still monopolizing the world arms market with shares that exceed 52% compared to 13.7% for Britain, 8.2 for Russia, 7.7 for France and 5% for Israel, as the most important customers are spread on three areas, the Arab world, Europe and Asia, and five countries hold the third of the arms market’s quota, Saudi Arabia, India, UAE, Greece and Turkey.