RBI Weekly Current Affairs Quiz: 31 August – 6 September 2026

The correct answer is 7.8 per cent. Real GDP, that is GDP at constant prices, is estimated at ₹81.36 lakh crore for the first quarter of 2026-27, and that level represents growth of 7.8 per cent. The figure is the highest first-quarter growth recorded in the four years from 2023-24 onwards, and manufacturing and services carried it. Each wrong option is a real number from the same release, which is what makes them tempting. Option A is the growth rate of the first quarter of the previous year, so it is the base against which this quarter is compared. Option B is the Reserve Bank of India's projection for the quarter, which the outcome exceeded. Option D is the growth of real Gross Value Added, not of GDP; real GVA stood at ₹73.82 lakh crore. Keep the three apart: 7.0 was the forecast, 7.8 the GDP outcome and 8.2 the GVA outcome.

The correct answer is the 9th Foundation Day, observed as IPPB Day 2026. The arithmetic is easy to hold if the launch date is remembered: India Post Payments Bank was launched on 1 September 2018, so the same date in 2026 completes nine years of working. The release itself says the bank has emerged over the past nine years as an important platform connecting citizens with banking, digital payments and government benefits. The other options are near misses of the kind a paper setter likes, and each is wrong only by a year or two, so the safer method is to anchor the launch year and count forward rather than to memorise the ordinal alone. Note also that the bank is set up under the Department of Posts in the Ministry of Communications, with the whole of its equity held by the Government of India.

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 4.07 million tonnes. The review records that NMDC mined that quantity of iron ore in August 2026, which is growth of 20.8 per cent over the same month a year earlier. Option B is the trap, and a well-made one: 3.58 million tonnes is NMDC's sales figure for the same month, up 5.6 per cent over the year. Production and sales are reported side by side in the release, so a candidate who reads only the first number he sees will answer wrongly. Options A and D do not appear in the release. Two further figures belong with this answer: for April to August of the financial year, production stood at 23.23 million tonnes and sales at 18.72 million tonnes. The release also notes that the Kirandul, Bacheli and Donimalai mines each recorded their highest August production so far, which is itself a likely question.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, usually shortened to MoSPI. Every table in the release, whether the expenditure components, the sector-wise Gross Value Added or the revised annual estimates, is sourced to that ministry. MoSPI also carried out the upward revision of real GDP growth for the three earlier years and moved the estimates to new price and production indices with base year 2022-23, among them an Output Producer Price Index and a Banking Services Price Index. Option C is wrong but close to the fact: the Reserve Bank of India had projected 7.0 per cent growth for this quarter, a forecast rather than the estimate itself, and the actual outcome was higher. NITI Aayog and the Department of Economic Affairs are not named in the release as the source of these national accounts figures at all.

The correct answer is the DakPay Sound Box. The release describes it as a launch for merchants, designed to simplify and strengthen the acceptance of everyday digital payments at their end. The other three options are real products of the bank, which is what makes this question worth attempting carefully. The Digital Mutual Fund Platform and the Digital Insurance Technology Platform were indeed launched on the same Foundation Day, but both are meant for customers rather than merchants: one opens a digital route to investment, the other connects customers to life, health and general insurance. The Surakshit Savings Account belongs to an earlier set of three account variants rolled out during the year, along with the SHG Savings Account and the Sampoorna Savings Account, and it carries cyber insurance of ₹25,000 against phishing, spoofing and SIM jacking.

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 NMDC. The review names the Top 7 producers as SAIL, RINL, NSL, the TSL Group, AM/NS, JSL (JSPL) and the JSW Group. NMDC does appear prominently in the same document, but as an iron ore miner rather than a steel maker in that group. It mined 4.07 million tonnes of iron ore in August 2026 and sold 3.58 million tonnes, and it lit up the indurating machine at its Nagarnar pellet plant, which has a capacity of 2 million tonnes a year. Options A, C and D are all in the group. Candidates should note the distinction the Ministry itself draws between producers of crude steel and suppliers of raw material, because questions are regularly set on the composition of the Top 7 list, and the miner's name sitting in the same release is the obvious distractor to place among them.

The correct answer is Gross Fixed Capital Formation, the measure of investment funded within the economy. It grew 11.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2026-27 against 5.8 per cent in the same quarter of the previous year, and that jump is the sharpest change among the expenditure components listed. Option A is wrong on the number rather than the idea: Private Final Consumption Expenditure, which is household spending on goods and services, grew 7.1 per cent, up from 6.8 per cent. Exports grew 12.0 per cent, up from 6.0 per cent. Government consumption and imports are not among the components given growth figures in this release, so options C and D cannot be supported from it. For revision, remember the trio of drivers in order: exports 12.0, investment 11.9 and household consumption 7.1 per cent.

The correct answer is 13.25 crore. The release gives this as the pan-India customer base as on 31 March 2026, and adds two shares worth remembering: 77 per cent of these customers are in rural areas and 49 per cent are women. Their deposits with the bank stood at ₹29,104 crore. Every wrong option here is another genuine figure from the same list, which is exactly the trap. The 6.5 crore in option A is the number of direct benefit transfer beneficiaries who received about ₹1.55 lakh crore. The 9.47 crore in option B counts Aadhaar mobile updates done by the bank, alongside 1.35 crore Bal Aadhaar enrolments. The 12.06 crore in option C counts Aadhaar enabled payment system transactions, through which ₹36,140 crore was disbursed. Read the label before the number in such tables.

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 Sweden. The review records that SRTMI and SWERIM of Sweden signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation in iron and steel research, technology and innovation. The partnership will concentrate on joint research and development, green steel, decarbonisation, the circular economy, advanced steels, artificial intelligence and machine learning, digital technologies and capacity building. Option A, Canada, is the distractor that catches most candidates, because the same document notes that Glenn Purves, Deputy Minister at Global Affairs Canada, met Steel Secretary Sandeep Poundrik to discuss bilateral cooperation. That was a meeting, not an agreement. Options B and D, Japan and Germany, are major steel-making nations but find no mention here. In such questions read the verb with care: an MoU signed is a different fact from discussions held.

The correct answer is that the new base year is 2022-23. The annual revised estimates use new price and production indices on that base, including an Output Producer Price Index and a Banking Services Price Index, along with updated administrative data drawn from several sources. Option B reverses the direction of the change, because real GDP growth was revised upwards for all three earlier years. Option C is wrong for the same reason of fact: the Output Producer Price Index is one of the new indices brought in, not one removed. Option D misplaces a number that does appear in the release; 7.1 per cent was the earlier estimate for 2024-25, which was itself revised to 7.2 per cent, while the estimate for 2025-26 moved up from 7.7 to 7.8 per cent. The revisions matter because they show the strong quarter sitting on an already stronger path.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Communications. India Post Payments Bank has been established under the Department of Posts, which sits in that ministry, and the entire equity of the bank is owned by the Government of India. This is a point aspirants often get wrong, because a bank feels as though it should belong to the Ministry of Finance, and option A is placed there for that reason. The postal link is the whole design of the institution: its reach rests on about 1,65,000 post offices, of which roughly 1,40,000 are in rural areas, and around 3,00,000 postal employees, so the doorstep model works through postal staff rather than branches. Its services are built on India Stack, delivered through a smartphone linked to the core banking system with a biometric device, and offered in 13 languages across 5.57 lakh villages and towns.

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.