SAIL Posts Best-Ever August Output and 13% Sales Growth

The correct answer is 1.871 million tonnes. The release states that SAIL achieved double digit year-on-year growth in overall sales volumes in August 2026, with total sales at this level, registering a rise of 13 per cent over the corresponding period last year. Option A is the figure for the corresponding period last year, and a hurried reader who picks the first number in the sentence will land on it, so read such sentences to the end before choosing. Option C is the cumulative sales figure for the wider April to August 2026 period, which carried growth of 5.6 per cent, and it belongs to a different time span altogether. Option D is the saleable steel production figure for August 2026 and belongs to the production table, not the sales table. The discipline this question rewards is separating production from sales and separating the month from the five-month period. Cash collections in the same month grew by 23 per cent year on year.

The correct answer is Rs 870 crore. The release records that during August 2026 SAIL further strengthened its financial position by reducing borrowings by this amount from the level of 31.03.2026. Option A, option C and option D are all constructed from digits that appear elsewhere in the same release, which is exactly how an examiner builds a distractor for a numbers question: the growth in cumulative sales was 5.6 per cent, rail supplies to Indian Railways were 1.23 lakh tonnes, and cumulative April to August sales were 7.71 million tonnes. A student who has read the release once will recognise every one of those figures and may pick the familiar shape rather than the correct fact. Attach each number firmly to its own head: borrowings to Rs 870 crore, railway supplies to 1.23 lakh tonnes, and cumulative sales to 7.71 million tonnes. SAIL comes under the Ministry of Steel.

The correct answer is that crude steel production grew by 8 per cent to 1.68 MT, against 1.55 MT in the corresponding period last year. The other options are all real numbers from the same release attached to the wrong product, which is the standard trap in a question built on a production table. Option B belongs to hot metal, which rose 9 per cent to 1.78 MT from 1.63 MT. Option C belongs to saleable steel, which rose 1 per cent to 1.69 MT from 1.66 MT. Option D mixes the sales growth rate of 13 per cent with the previous year's crude steel figure of 1.55 MT, producing a statement in which both halves are drawn from the release yet the whole is false. The way to hold the table is by the order of the three products and the falling growth rates: hot metal at 9 per cent, crude steel at 8 per cent, saleable steel at 1 per cent, all of them best-ever August figures for the company.