Q1 2026-27 GDP Estimates Explained: Base Year and Deflators

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 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 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 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.