Economy and Banking News Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, so the answer is 1 and 3 only.

Bharat 22 is an exchange traded fund launched in November 2017 and managed by ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund (1). It holds shares in 22 companies, a mix of central public sector enterprises, public sector banks and the government's strategic holdings in companies such as ITC, Axis Bank and L&T. By selling its stakes into the fund, the government raised money quickly, so the ETF was designed to speed up its disinvestment programme (3).

Statement 2 is false: ETF units are listed and traded on stock exchanges like shares, so Bharat 22 is a marketable security. Any option containing 2 is wrong.

Answer: A

The index showed the fastest growth since June, 2017.

A reading of 52.6 on the Nikkei India Services Business Activity Index, compiled by IHS Markit, was the strongest in about a year. A reading above 50 indicates expansion, and the services sector had been recovering through 2018 after the disruptions of demonetisation in late 2016 and the GST rollout in July 2017, which had pushed the index below 50 at times.

Since the growth was the fastest in roughly twelve months, the comparison point is June 2017, just before GST was introduced. June 2014, 2015 and 2016 would imply records of two to four years, which the reading did not set.

Answer: C

Statements 1, 2 and 3 are correct, so the answer is Only 1, 2 and 3.

The Indian Gas Exchange, launched in June 2020 as a subsidiary of the Indian Energy Exchange, is a digital platform for spot and forward trading of imported natural gas (1). It began with three physical hubs, Dahej and Hazira in Gujarat and Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh (2), and imported LNG is regasified and sold through it, so buyers and sellers no longer need to find each other bilaterally (3).

Statement 4 is wrong: domestically produced gas, whose price was fixed by the Government at the time, was not traded on the exchange; the platform was built for imported gas. That rules out '1, 2, 3 and 4', while the other options leave out a correct statement.

Answer: C

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, so the answer is Only 1 and 3.

The Real Time Market, launched across India in June 2020, is an organised platform where buyers and sellers can trade electricity close to the time of delivery, to balance their requirements as they arise (1). It went live on both power exchanges, the Indian Energy Exchange and Power Exchange India Limited (3).

Statement 2 is wrong. Trading takes place in half-hourly sessions, so there are 48 auctions a day, not 50. Options including statement 2 therefore fail.

Answer: B

The index is AGRIDEX.

In 2020 the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange launched futures trading in NCDEX AGRIDEX, India's first agricultural commodity futures index. It tracks the prices of the most liquid farm commodities traded on the exchange, allowing traders to take a position on agricultural prices as a whole rather than on one crop.

AGRODEX, FARMDEX and CROPDEX are plausible-sounding names, but none of them is the name NCDEX gave to the index.

Answer: C

Statements 2 and 3 are correct, so the answer is 2 and 3 only.

The Union Budget 2025-26 put total expenditure at about ₹ 50.65 lakh crore, and allocated a little over ₹ 2 lakh crore to food subsidy under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

Statement 1 is wrong: the fiscal deficit for 2025-26 was estimated at 4.4% of GDP. The figure of 4.9% was the budget estimate for the previous year, 2024-25, which is the likely source of the confusion.

Answer: D

The app is RBI Retail Direct.

The RBI Retail Direct scheme, launched in November 2021, lets individual investors open a gilt account directly with the Reserve Bank and buy government securities in primary auctions and on the secondary market; it now also has a mobile app.

The other names are not for G-Sec investment. RBI MANI (Mobile Aided Note Identifier) helps visually impaired people identify currency notes, and RBIDATA gives access to the Bank's statistics. 'RBI DigiSec' is not an RBI app.

Answer: B

Statements 1 and 3 are correct, so the answer is 1 and 3 only.

The Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2024 placed India third in the number of unicorns, behind the USA and China. It also found that Indian founders had built more unicorns outside India than founders from any other country had built outside their own.

Statement 2 is wrong. Zomato has been a publicly listed company since 2021, and the index counts only privately held start-ups valued at over a billion dollars, so it does not feature at all, let alone in the top 20.

Answer: B

India's GDP grew by 5.7% in April to June 2017.

The Central Statistics Office reported at the end of August 2017 that growth in the first quarter of 2017-18 had slowed to 5.7 per cent, the lowest in three years. The slowdown was widely put down to the after-effects of demonetisation and to firms running down stocks ahead of the GST, which came into force on 1 July 2017.

The other figures are near misses: 6.1% was the growth in the preceding quarter (January to March 2017), and 5.4% and 5.9% do not match the official estimate for April to June.

Answer: D

The FRP for 2017-18 was fixed at Rs 255 per quintal.

The Fair and Remunerative Price is the minimum price sugar mills must pay farmers for cane, set by the Union government on the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. For the 2017-18 sugar season it was raised by Rs 25, from Rs 230 to Rs 255 per quintal, linked to a basic recovery rate of 9.5 per cent.

\[ 230 + 25 = 255 \]

Rs 230 is the trap: it was the FRP for 2016-17. Rs 235 and Rs 250 were not fixed for either season.