India-EFTA TEPA Covers 99.6 Per Cent of India's Exports

The correct answer is Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. These are the four member states of the European Free Trade Association, and leaders of all four were in New Delhi to mark the first year of the agreement with India. Option A is wrong because Austria, Denmark, Finland and Sweden are members of the European Union, not of EFTA, and so they trade with India under European Union arrangements rather than under this pact. Option C is wrong for the same reason: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland are all European Union members and none of them belongs to the four-nation bloc that signed the partnership with India. Option D is a near miss designed to mislead, because it keeps Norway and Switzerland but replaces Iceland and Liechtenstein with Sweden and Denmark, which are European Union countries. Only option B names the exact set of four partners covered by the agreement.

The correct answer is 1 October 2025. That is the day the partnership agreement between India and the four EFTA states entered into force, which is why leaders from all the member countries gathered in the Indian capital in early October to mark its completion of one year and to discuss the road ahead. Option A is wrong because it places the start a full year too early, before the pact had taken effect. Option B is wrong because no April date is involved in the coming into force of this agreement. Option D is wrong because that is the period in which the outreach meeting for exporters and the second Prosperity Summit were being held, not the day the pact began; by then the agreement had already been operating for a year. Candidates should remember the entry into force date together with the investment clause, since both are asked frequently.

The correct answer is 50 billion US dollars. The article in question asks the EFTA states to aim at increasing foreign direct investment from their investors into India by that amount within ten years of the pact starting, and then by a further fifty billion dollars during the five years that follow. The same provision also sets the aim of helping generate one million jobs in India within fifteen years. The Commerce Secretary described this written investment commitment as the feature that sets the pact apart from other trade agreements India has signed. Option A understates the first-decade goal. Option C is not a figure used anywhere in the investment clause. Option D matches neither the ten-year goal nor the combined total, which comes to a hundred billion dollars only after the additional five-year tranche is counted, so quoting it for ten years is wrong.