RBI Current Affairs Quiz: 2 September 2026

The correct answer is 2022-23. The backgrounder states that the updated series of annual and quarterly GDP estimates, released on 31 August 2026, takes 2022-23 as its base year. The same base year is used for the new output Producer Price Index and for the Banking Services Price Index that feed into the series. A base year supplies the reference prices against which real growth is measured, and it is revised from time to time so that relative prices keep describing the economy as it is. Option B, 2011-12, is the series that has now been replaced; the backgrounder uses it only to explain why an old estimate of Rs 86.05 lakh crore cannot be compared with a figure from the new series. Options A and D do not appear in the release at all. Candidates often confuse the year of release with the base year, so note that 2026 is when the series came out and 2022-23 is the base it rests on.

The correct answer is A-. The agency moved both the long-term foreign currency issuer rating and the long-term local currency issuer rating up by exactly one notch, from BBB+ to A-, and kept the outlook at stable. Option A, A+, is two notches above the new rating and was not awarded; a single-notch move from BBB+ cannot reach it. Option C, AA-, is higher still and belongs to a different rating band altogether. Option D, BBB, is below the rating India already held, so it would have been a downgrade rather than an upgrade. Note also that the country ceiling, which is a separate measure, was raised by one notch to A, one step above the new sovereign rating. Candidates should hold the two apart: A- is the issuer rating and A is the ceiling that applies to borrowers inside the country.

The correct answer is USD 54.02 billion. That is the figure twenty IFSC Banking Units had sanctioned under the Reserve Bank's special swap facility for FCNR(B) deposits as on 31 August 2026, and about USD 52.82 billion of it had already been disbursed. Options A and B are real numbers from the same release but from earlier dates in the same month: sanctions stood at USD 28.60 billion on 14 August and USD 37.26 billion on 21 August. The question is a test of whether the candidate tracks the date attached to each figure, because the amount nearly doubled inside a fortnight. Option D does not appear in the release at all. A useful way to hold the story together is the pair of figures that bracket it: USD 54.02 billion sanctioned and USD 52.82 billion disbursed, the small gap between them being the part not yet drawn down.

The correct answer is output and intermediate consumption. Double deflation is a production-side technique: gross output is deflated with one price index and intermediate consumption with another, and real Gross Value Added is what remains after subtracting the second from the first. India now applies it to industries in the manufacturing sector, and the IMF describes it as the preferred method for measuring GDP in volume terms. Option B is wrong because exports and imports belong to the expenditure side of the accounts and are not what this method separates. Option C is wrong because wages and profits are components of the income approach, not quantities that are deflated in this exercise. Option D is wrong for the same reason as B: private final consumption expenditure is a measure of final demand, and the backgrounder says plainly that double deflation does not enter its calculation because final demand has no intermediate consumption to subtract.

The correct answer is 4.4 per cent. JCR noted that the Centre's fiscal deficit came down from 4.7 per cent in FY25 to 4.4 per cent in FY26, and that this happened while capital spending was kept high, with infrastructure investment given particular weight. That combination, a smaller deficit without cutting productive spending, is what the agency described as an improvement in the quality of fiscal expenditure. Option C, 4.7 per cent, is the figure for the earlier year, FY25, and is the most common trap in this question. Options A and B do not appear in the release at all. It is worth remembering the growth figure alongside the deficit: real GDP grew 7.8 per cent in FY26 and held the same pace in the first quarter of FY27, so the deficit fell in a year when the economy was also expanding strongly.

The correct answer is the IFSCA Act, 2019. The release describes IFSCA as the unified regulatory authority set up by the Government of India under an Act of Parliament for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in India's International Financial Services Centres. Its Chairperson is K. Rajaraman. Option A, the SEBI Act, created the securities market regulator and is not the statute behind IFSCA, although securities business inside an IFSC does fall within IFSCA's remit. Option C, the Banking Regulation Act, governs banking companies in the domestic market and is administered with the Reserve Bank of India. Option D, the Foreign Exchange Management Act, deals with foreign exchange transactions generally. Only the IFSCA Act is the founding law, and its year, 2019, is the detail most often asked.

The correct answer is Rs 88.27 lakh crore. The release says the first quarter of 2026-27 should be compared with the earlier first-quarter figure from the same series, and in doing so it names the current-price estimate for the quarter. Option A, Rs 80.32 lakh crore, is the estimate for the first quarter of 2025-26 once the 2022-23 base-year series was introduced in February 2026, and it is the figure the new quarter must be measured against. Option B, Rs 86.05 lakh crore, is the estimate first published on 29 August 2025 under the old 2011-12 series; the Ministry argues it cannot be compared directly with a number from the revised series. Option D does not appear anywhere in the release. Also remember the two later revisions of the same quarter, to Rs 80.44 lakh crore with the provisional estimates of 5 June 2026 and then to Rs 80.00 lakh crore after the new IIP and PPI series were incorporated.

The correct answer is the Asian Development Bank. It is a multilateral development bank that lends to its member countries; it is not a credit rating agency and assigns no sovereign ratings, so it cannot appear in this list. The release names three agencies that upgraded India over the preceding year. Morningstar DBRS acted first, in May 2025. S&P Global Ratings followed in August 2025. Rating and Investment Information, Inc., which like JCR is based in Japan, upgraded India in September 2025. The Japan Credit Rating Agency's move is therefore the fourth such decision in roughly a year, which is why the release presents it as evidence of a steady strengthening of India's economic fundamentals rather than a one-off judgement. Options A, B and C are all named in the release and are all genuine rating agencies.

The correct answer is USD 11.12 billion. Indian banks raised that amount through bond listings on IFSC exchanges over the five months from April to August 2026. Option A, USD 9.17 billion, is the part of that total listed in July and August alone, so it is a subset rather than the whole. Option C, USD 11.62 billion, belongs to a different channel entirely: it is the value of External Commercial Borrowings disbursed by IBUs in the same period, with monthly flows rising from USD 1.54 billion in April to USD 3.54 billion in August. The two numbers are close enough that they are easily swapped, so pair each with its channel when revising. Option D appears nowhere in the release. Together the three channels, swap mobilisation, ECB financing and bond issuance, are what the release presents as evidence of a deepening international banking ecosystem at GIFT-IFSC.

The correct answer is the steep rise in mineral prices. Constant-price estimates for mining are built from the Index of Industrial Production, which grew -3.8 per cent in April, -1.4 per cent in May and 1.6 per cent in June, broadly matching real GVA growth of -2.4 per cent. Nominal estimates are then derived by applying producer price indices, and those prices climbed sharply: crude petroleum and natural gas by 69.5 per cent in April, 72.2 per cent in May and 33.7 per cent in June, and mining of metal ores by 27.6, 25.2 and 23.5 per cent. That price surge, not any inconsistency in the data, explains the gap. Option A is wrong because volumes fell in two of the three months. Option C is wrong because mining remains part of the series. Option D is wrong because coal and lignite are covered, and in fact recorded negative price inflation in all three months.

The correct answer is the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. JCR pointed to three things behind the better asset quality of Indian banks: the establishment of this Code, the capital the Government infused into banks, and stronger supervision by the Reserve Bank of India. It added that capital adequacy and profitability in banking have stayed sound, and that asset quality and capital adequacy in the non-banking financial sector have improved as well, which strengthens the financial system as a whole. Option B, the Companies Act, governs how companies are incorporated and run and was not cited here. Option C, the Competition Act, deals with anti-competitive conduct and combinations, a different subject entirely. Option D, the Foreign Trade Policy, concerns exports and imports. Only the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is named in the release in connection with bank asset quality.

The correct answer is K. Rajaraman. He is quoted in the release saying that the rapid scale-up of banking activity at GIFT-IFSC shows the depth and growing international orientation of India's International Financial Services Centre, and that the centre is serving as an effective bridge between global pools of capital and India's financing needs. Option B names a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, an office quite separate from IFSCA, though the Reserve Bank is the body whose swap facility is being used here. Option C is not associated with IFSCA in this release. Option D names an official of a multilateral development bank and has nothing to do with the International Financial Services Centres Authority. For revision, tie the name to the institution and to the statute: K. Rajaraman, IFSCA, IFSCA Act, 2019.