Centre to Borrow Rs 7,86,000 Crore in H2 of FY 2026-27

The correct answer is Rs 7,86,000 crore. The Finance Ministry, after consulting the Reserve Bank of India, settled on this gross market borrowing figure for the closing half of FY 2026-27, and the whole sum is to be raised through 23 weekly auctions of dated securities. Within it, Rs 15,000 crore has been kept aside for Sovereign Green Bonds. Option A is wrong because Rs 6,86,000 crore is simply a lower figure than the one announced and matches nothing in the plan. Option C is wrong for the same reason in the other direction; no part of the borrowing calendar carries a figure of Rs 8,86,000 crore. Option D is wrong as well, since the plan does not stretch anywhere near Rs 9,86,000 crore for the half-year. Candidates should note that the full-year borrowing through dated securities is a separate and much bigger number, Rs 15,99,506 crore, which should not be confused with the half-yearly amount asked about here.

The correct answer is 23. The gross borrowing of Rs 7,86,000 crore planned for the second half of FY 2026-27 will be completed through 23 weekly auctions of dated securities, with the paper spread over eight maturity buckets ranging from three years to fifty years. Option A, 13, is wrong here, although the number does appear elsewhere in the same announcement: 13 is the count of auction weeks planned for Treasury Bills in the third quarter of the financial year, which is a different instrument and a different calendar altogether. Option B is wrong because no stage of the borrowing plan uses that count of auctions. Option D is wrong as well; the calendar does not run to that many dated-security auctions in the half-year. A careful reader should separate the two counts, remembering that 23 belongs to the dated-security auctions while 13 belongs to the Treasury Bill weeks.

The correct answer is Rs 50,000 crore. Ways and Means Advances is the facility through which the Reserve Bank of India lets the Centre bridge short-lived mismatches between money received and money paid out, and for the second half of FY 2026-27 the ceiling on this facility has been set at Rs 50,000 crore. Options A, B and C are all wrong because none of them is the ceiling named in the announcement; they are plausible-looking round figures placed around the real one. Aspirants should also keep the other numbers of the plan clearly apart from this one: the gross half-yearly borrowing is Rs 7,86,000 crore, the green bond portion is Rs 15,000 crore, the weekly Treasury Bill issuance in the third quarter is Rs 23,000 crore, and the greenshoe option lets the government retain up to Rs 2,000 crore extra on each security put up for auction.