Fiscal deficit is best defined as

The correct answer is D. National income counts only final goods and services; intermediate goods are deliberately left out, because counting the flour as well as the bread would mean counting the same value twice. Option A is a genuine feature, since national income is an aggregate of the whole economy and belongs to macroeconomics, not to the study of a single firm or household. Option B is a feature as well: national income is a flow, measured over a period of time, unlike wealth, which is a stock measured at a point of time. Option C is also a feature, as the Indian accounts express national income for a financial year running from April to March. So the odd statement is the one about intermediate goods, and the rule to carry into the hall is that only the value added at each stage enters the total.

The correct answer is A, implicit price deflator. The deflator is nominal GDP divided by real GDP and multiplied by a hundred, so it is not computed from a fixed basket of goods at all; it is implied by the two GDP series, and that is exactly why it carries the word implicit. Option B is wrong because there is no index of that name, and the deflator is not built explicitly from price quotations. Option C is wrong because the standard term pairs implicit with price deflator, not with inflation index; the word index in economics is reserved for measures such as the CPI and the WPI. Option D is wrong for the same reason as B, since nothing explicit is used in its construction. Remember the one advantage of the deflator: it covers every good and service in GDP, not a selected basket.

The correct answer is C, GNP at factor cost. Work through the expression in two steps. Adding depreciation to a net aggregate turns it gross, so NNP at market prices plus depreciation gives GNP at market prices. Subtracting net indirect taxes from a market price aggregate turns it into a factor cost aggregate, so the result is GNP at factor cost. Option A is wrong because it stops after the first step and ignores the subtraction of net indirect taxes. Option B is wrong because net national income at market prices is simply NNP at market prices, the aggregate we began with. Option D is wrong because nothing in the expression removes net factor income from abroad, and that is the only operation that could turn a national aggregate into a domestic one. Hold on to two rules: depreciation moves between net and gross, and net indirect taxes move between factor cost and market price.

The correct answer is D, Both I and II. Both statements state the same rule from opposite sides: national income is the value of final goods and services, and the value of intermediate goods is excluded so that the same output is not counted at every stage of production. Option A is wrong because statement I is also correct; leaving out intermediate goods is not an error but the central convention of national accounting. Option B is wrong because both statements are correct, as the value added method itself demonstrates. Option C is wrong because final goods, those bought for final use rather than for further processing or resale, are precisely what the accounts add up. Note that the same good can be intermediate or final depending on use: sugar bought by a bakery is intermediate, the same sugar bought by a household is final.

The correct answer is B. The Survey is written in the Economic Division of the Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, under the overall supervision of the Chief Economic Adviser, and is laid before both Houses of Parliament, usually a day before the Union Budget. Option A is wrong because the Reserve Bank publishes its own documents, such as the Annual Report, the Monetary Policy Report and the Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India, but not the Economic Survey. Option C is wrong because NITI Aayog is a policy think tank for the government and does not author the Survey. Option D is wrong because the National Statistical Office compiles the statistics, including the national accounts, which the Survey then uses and interprets. Remember also that the Survey is a convention, not a requirement of the Constitution.