IBPS Current Affairs Quiz: 9 October 2026

The correct answer is Singapore. The city state is India’s largest source of foreign direct investment, with cumulative inflows of roughly USD 194.68 billion between April 2000 and March 2026, and its institutional investors, among them GIC and Temasek, hold significant positions across the Indian economy. This standing is one reason the Union Finance Minister’s engagements there centre on capital markets, taxation and digital financial connectivity. Option A, Mauritius, was for years the leading route for investment into India and is still a major one, which is exactly why it is the most tempting wrong answer here. Option C, the United States, and option D, Japan, are both large investors and important economic partners, but neither tops the table of cumulative inflows. For objective papers, hold Singapore at the first place and Mauritius immediately behind it as the pair most often swapped in questions.

The correct answer is about 36%. The Ministry of Coal said that daily supplies of coal to the power sector have climbed roughly 36% from the low point reached in September, and that the October average is around 9% higher than the September average. That rise, together with stronger rail movement, is the ministry's main answer to reports of a looming power shortage. Option A, about 12%, is far below the stated improvement and matches no figure given. Option B, about 24%, is also invented and would understate the recovery the ministry described. Option D, about 48%, overstates it; no such number appears anywhere in the clarification. Candidates should keep the pair of percentages apart: the 36% figure measures the gain over the September trough, while the smaller 9% figure compares the whole of October with the whole of September.

The correct answer is the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia. ASEAN hosted the 15th Joint Committee of the ASEAN-India Trade in Goods Agreement there from 6 to 9 October 2026, along with meetings of sub-committees, and the round was conducted in hybrid format. Option B, Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, is wrong for this round, although the next Joint Committee meeting is indeed to be held in India, in January 2027. Option C, Putrajaya in Malaysia, is a plausible distractor because the co-chair from the other side was Malaysia's Deputy Secretary General for Trade, but Malaysia only supplied a chair and not the venue. Option D, Bangkok in Thailand, is another ASEAN capital whose delegates attended but which did not host. The pairing to remember is the 15th round in Jakarta and the sixteenth in India.

The correct answer is 2,129. The Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises stated that the Centre of Excellence for Khadi at NIFT, Delhi has developed that many Khadi design collections across multiple categories, as part of the effort to place Khadi in contemporary fashion and lifestyle. The same account records the launch of Navyug Khadi with 710 new products and of a wellness and yoga wear collection named Svadha. Options A, B and D are invented totals that appear nowhere in the ministry's account, and a candidate who confuses the design collections with the product count would wrongly pick a smaller figure. The safest way to hold these numbers is as a pair, namely the larger number for design collections at the NIFT centre and the smaller one for products under Navyug Khadi.

The correct answer is the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. The Centre for Trade and Investment Law is housed there, and its Head, Prof. James J. Nedumpara, also holds the WTO India Chair. He said the centre was established to strengthen India's trade capacity as a broader element of economic statecraft, and noted that it has given more than four thousand legal opinions. The Vice Chancellor of the institute, Dr. K. Rangarajan, spoke at the anniversary about how specialised trade-policy institutions had grown there. Options B, C and D name respected bodies in economics, law and public administration, but none of them hosts the centre. The anniversary was held at the Prime Minister's Museum and Library in New Delhi, which was the venue and not the parent institution, a distinction worth keeping clear.

The correct answer is the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. TRAI is the regulator for telecom as well as for broadcasting and cable services, and it is TRAI that has placed the draft manual for DRM-based digital addressable systems in the public domain for comments. The paper gives auditors a clause-wise method for checking platforms that fall under Schedule X of the Interconnection (Addressable Systems) Regulations of 2017. The Securities and Exchange Board of India, in option A, regulates the securities market and has no role in television distribution audits. Prasar Bharati, in option C, is the public service broadcaster that runs Doordarshan and All India Radio; it is a broadcaster, not the authority that frames audit procedures for private distribution platforms. The Central Board of Film Certification, in option D, certifies films for public exhibition and is likewise unconnected with the audit of addressable systems. Only TRAI frames and issues such manuals under the interconnection rules.

The correct answer is Rs 829.69 crore. That is the floor below which the freehold parcel at Najafgarh Industrial Area will not be sold, and every bid in the electronic auction has to start from it. The bidding then moves up in steps of at least Rs 1 crore per acre. Option A and option C are figures close to the real one and are the kind of distractor a paper setter builds by shifting the first digit, so the number has to be learnt exactly. Option D, Rs 16.60 crore, is also drawn from this auction, but it is the earnest money a bidder must deposit to enter the process, not the reserve price; mixing the two up is the commonest error in questions of this type. A further figure worth separating from both is the processing fee of Rs 24 lakh, which is payable only by the highest bidder.

The correct answer is USD 194.68 billion. That is the cumulative figure for foreign direct investment flowing from Singapore into India over the period from April 2000 to March 2026, and it is the number behind the description of Singapore as India’s single largest source of such investment. Option A, at 94.68 billion, and option B, at 144.68 billion, both fall well short of the recorded total and would place Singapore lower in the table of investing countries than it actually stands. Option D, at 234.68 billion, overstates the inflow. Along with the figure, note the window it covers, which begins in April 2000, because the same number is meaningless without the period; and remember the two Singaporean institutional investors named with it, GIC and Temasek, along with the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and GIFT City as the Indian platforms held out for further Singaporean capital.

The correct answer is 470 rakes a day. Rail loading of coal has averaged more than 465 rakes a day during October, and the ministry noted that the 470-rake target was met on three days running, which it treated as a sign that logistics had strengthened alongside production. Looking ahead, the ministry said loading held in the band of 465 to 475 rakes a day should support further stabilisation and then allow stocks to be rebuilt. Option A and option B name lower daily figures that the clarification never mentions, and both sit below even the monthly average already achieved. Option D names a figure well above the band the ministry wants sustained, so it cannot be the target that was reached. The number to memorise is the target of 470, distinct from the monthly average of more than 465.

The correct answer is three of eight. The Joint Committee has eight sub-committees, and three of them held hybrid meetings on the margins of the 15th round in Jakarta. They were the Sub-Committee on Legal and Institutional Issues, known as SC-LII, the Sub-Committee on National Treatment on Market Access, known as SC-NTMA, and the Sub-Committee on Rules of Origin, known as SC-ROO. Option A misstates both the number that met and the total, since there are eight sub-committees and not six. Option C overstates how many met, and option D would mean every sub-committee sat, which did not happen. Candidates should also note the direction issued at the end of the round, namely that all sub-committees must speed up the chapters still pending under the AITIGA Review and attach firm, time-bound deliverables to them.

The correct answer is about 80 per cent. The ministry said that women make up roughly four fifths of the approximately half a million Khadi artisans, and that their participation has been especially strong in agarbatti, handmade paper, the Honey Mission and the service industries, giving them a route to financial independence. Options A, B and C all understate the share and match no figure in the account. Candidates should not confuse this share with the separate finding of the evaluation study by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India at Ahmedabad, which reported that more than 75 per cent of artisans across the schemes saw a measurable increase in income after the interventions. One number describes who the artisans are, the other what happened to their earnings.

The correct answer is more than 4,000. Prof. James J. Nedumpara, Head of the Centre for Trade and Investment Law and WTO India Chair, said the centre had provided that many legal opinions, had participated in negotiations concerning nearly ten free trade agreements, and had contributed to negotiations, submissions, notifications and dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization. Options A, B and D are invented totals and appear nowhere in the account of the event. Candidates should pair the figure with the other number from the same sentence, namely the count of free trade agreements, and with the areas the Joint Secretary listed as the centre's newer research interests, which were critical minerals, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, supply chains, climate and sustainability.

The correct answer is DRM-based systems used for IPTV distribution. Schedule X of the interconnection rules carries the requirements for systems built on Digital Rights Management, and these are used chiefly where television channels are delivered over internet protocol. It was precisely because no audit manual existed for this schedule that IPTV operators, broadcasters and auditors asked the regulator for one, leading to the present draft. Option B names conditional access systems and set-top boxes, which belong to Schedule III; the manual covering them was brought out separately in March 2026. Option C, FM radio transmission equipment, and option D, community radio stations, concern sound broadcasting and are not part of the addressable television distribution framework at all, so no schedule of these interconnection regulations deals with them in this manner.

The correct answer is the Department of Public Enterprises in the Ministry of Finance. NLMC was set up to help central public sector enterprises and other government entities monetise surplus land and non-core assets, and it sits in that department. In the present case it is facilitating the sale on behalf of HIL (India) Limited, which owns the plot. Option B names the Department of Land Resources, which works on land records and watershed programmes under the Ministry of Rural Development and has no role in monetising enterprise assets. Option C, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, deals with industrial policy and foreign direct investment questions. Option D pairs the Department of Expenditure with the wrong ministry altogether, since that department belongs to the Ministry of Finance and not to Home Affairs. Candidates should remember the chain: NLMC, Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Finance.

The correct answer is Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the President of Singapore. During her official visit the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs is to call on him as part of a set of high level engagements with the country’s leadership. The other three options are all office holders she is also to meet, which is what makes this question a test of designations rather than of names. Option A, Lawrence Wong, is the Prime Minister of Singapore. Option B, Gan Kim Yong, is the Deputy Prime Minister. Option D, Vivian Balakrishnan, is the Foreign Minister. Questions of this kind are very common in general awareness papers, and the usual trap is to swap the President with the Prime Minister, so learn the four names as a block with their posts attached, and link them to the India-Singapore Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that the talks are meant to carry forward.

The correct answer is 0.116 MT a day. The Ministry of Coal reported that the rate at which coal stocks at power stations were being drawn down slowed sharply, with the daily drawdown dropping by more than half from 0.243 MT a day in September to 0.116 MT a day in October. The ministry called the position one that is stabilising, while admitting that the rebuilding of stocks has not yet started. Option A, option C and option D are invented levels that appear nowhere in the clarification; option C would also imply a fall of far more than half, and options A and D would imply a much smaller slowdown than the one reported. For the examination hall the useful anchor is the comparison itself: a drawdown of 0.243 MT a day in September against 0.116 MT a day in October, a reduction of more than fifty per cent.

The correct answer is January 2027 in India. At the close of the Jakarta round the two sides fixed the next Joint Committee sitting for January 2027, to be held in India and again in hybrid mode. That meeting will review what the sub-committees have delivered in the interval and give further guidance so that the negotiations are concluded on schedule. Option A is wrong because Indonesia hosted the round that has just ended, at the ASEAN Secretariat. Option C and option D name months and ASEAN host countries that appear nowhere in the announcement; Singapore and Viet Nam sent delegates to Jakarta but were not named as hosts. The examination point is the handover of the host role from ASEAN to India, with the Indian round carrying forward the AITIGA Review.

The correct answer is Chittadurga in Karnataka and Kuttur in Kerala. The ministry said the Central Sliver Plants of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission are being modernised and that these two have completed the work and become operational, with the Chittadurga plant meeting half of its energy requirement from solar power while wind power is under study. Option B mixes up two places that figure in the account for other reasons, since Ponduru is the Khadi variety that received a GI tag and Agra hosted the first BRICS MSME Forum. Options C and D name industrial towns that do not appear at all. The examination hook here is the link between the two plant locations, the solar share at Chittadurga and the commission that owns them.

The correct answer is The Emerging Sustainability Landscape: Responding to Shifting Winds. That issue of the CTIL Magazine examines the opportunities and the challenges developing countries may face as they take part in the evolving intersection of trade and sustainability. Option C is the distractor to watch, because Investment Law Compass is a real publication of the centre, its monthly newsletter on developments in investment law and policy, and a special anniversary edition of it was launched at the same event, but that is the newsletter and not the magazine. Options A and D are invented titles, though both touch themes the speakers raised, since the Commerce Secretary spoke of digital trade and sustainability-linked trade measures reshaping the global agenda. The ceremony ended with Distinguished Long Service Awards for CTIL faculty and staff.

The correct answer is 30 October 2026. The regulator has asked for written inputs, comments and suggestions by that date, and has said that each one should be supported by detailed reasons, justification and relevant data. Comments are to be sent preferably in electronic form to the Broadcasting and Cable Services wing. Option B, 30 November 2026, and option C, 19 November 2026, are later dates that find no place in the consultation notice. Option D, 10 March 2026, is a date in the past and is the kind of distractor built from the earlier Schedule III manual rather than from this draft; a comment period cannot close before the paper itself was issued. Candidates should therefore link the draft DRM manual with the deadline falling at the end of October, and remember that the draft has also been hosted on the regulator’s website for public reading.

The correct answer is 5.119 acres, which works out to about 20,722.93 square metres. The parcel carries an industrial land use and is being offered for outright sale through an e-tender followed by an e-auction. The release makes clear that the area is provisional and indicative, and that the exact extent will be fixed through a joint survey conducted with the successful bidder, so the figure should be remembered along with that qualification. Option A, option C and option D are built by changing one digit or shifting the decimal point, which is exactly how such distractors are framed in objective papers. Candidates should therefore link the plot with its two paired measures, the acreage and the figure in square metres, and keep in mind that the sale is on an as-is-where-is basis with no recourse to the seller.

The correct answer is GIC and Temasek. GIC, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, and Temasek Holdings are the two Singaporean institutional investors named as having significant investments spread across the Indian economy, and the Union Finance Minister is to hold separate meetings with the chief executives of both. Option B pairs Temasek with Mubadala, which is an investment company of the United Arab Emirates and not Singaporean. Option C pairs GIC with Khazanah Nasional, the sovereign fund of Malaysia, so the pair again mixes countries. Option D names the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and GIFT City, which belong on the other side of the transaction: they are the Indian platforms offered as routes through which Singaporean capital can participate more fully, including through investment vehicles and funds, and not investors from Singapore.

The correct answer is 19 November 2026. Registration, the technical bid and the earnest money or bank guarantee have all to reach the corporation by that date, after which the technical bids are opened on 20 November 2026. Option A, 29 October 2026, is the last date for sending queries about the auction, not for the bid itself. Option B, 3 November 2026, is the day fixed for the pre-bid meeting in New Delhi, where prospective bidders can have the process explained to them. Option D, 23 November 2026, is the date of the mock auction, a trial run held before the real bidding; the e-auction date is to be announced only after the technical bids have been opened. Keeping this calendar in order is the point of the question, since all four dates belong to the same auction and are easily confused with one another.