The World Economic Outlook report is published by which organisation?

The correct answer is C, 1995. The World Trade Organization came into being on 1 January 1995 as the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and India, which had been a party to GATT since 1948, became a member of the WTO on that very first day, which makes it a founding member. Option A is wrong because 2005 is remembered in trade history for the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, not for India's membership. Option B is wrong because 2000 marks no change in India's membership, although the quantitative restrictions on imports were being removed around that time under WTO obligations. Option D is wrong because in 1990 the WTO did not exist; the Uruguay Round of negotiations that created it ran from 1986 to 1994 and ended with the Marrakesh Agreement. Remember the chain: GATT from 1948, WTO from 1 January 1995.

The correct answer is A, the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944. In July 1944 delegates of forty four allied nations, including India, met at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in the United States and agreed to create the International Monetary Fund for monetary cooperation and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for reconstruction lending, which is why the two are called the Bretton Woods twins. Option B is wrong because the Yalta Conference of 1945 was a political meeting of the allied leaders about the post-war settlement of Europe, not about economic institutions. Option C is wrong because the Marrakesh Agreement of April 1994 closed the Uruguay Round and created the World Trade Organization, fifty years after Bretton Woods. Option D is wrong because the Doha Ministerial Conference of 2001 launched the Doha Development Agenda within the already existing WTO.

The correct answer is C, Washington DC. The IMF has its headquarters in Washington DC in the United States, and the World Bank Group stands across the street from it in the same city, which is why both are often described together as the Washington institutions. Option A is wrong because Geneva is the seat of the World Trade Organization, the International Labour Organisation and the World Health Organization, and it is the commonest distractor in this question. Option B is wrong because New York is the headquarters of the United Nations itself, together with UNICEF and UNDP, but not of the Fund. Option D is wrong because Basel in Switzerland is the seat of the Bank for International Settlements and of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, whose capital norms the banking examinations ask about separately. Learn the trio: IMF and World Bank in Washington DC, WTO in Geneva.

The correct answer is A, Geneva in Switzerland. The WTO works from Geneva, where the GATT secretariat had been housed before it, and its head carries the title Director-General. Option B is wrong because Paris is the headquarters of UNESCO and of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well as of the Financial Action Task Force. Option C is wrong because Vienna is the seat of the International Atomic Energy Agency, OPEC and UNIDO. Option D is wrong because Rome is the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. A useful way to hold these is by city: Geneva for trade, health and labour, Rome for food, Vienna for atomic energy and oil, Paris for education and economic cooperation, and Washington DC for the Fund and the Bank.

The correct answer is A, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. GATT was signed in 1947 by twenty three countries, India among them, and came into force on 1 January 1948 as a treaty with a small secretariat rather than a full organisation. After eight rounds of negotiation, the last of them the Uruguay Round of 1986 to 1994, it was replaced by the WTO on 1 January 1995. Option B is wrong because UNCTAD, set up in 1964 with its seat at Geneva, continues to exist as a United Nations body for trade and development and was never replaced. Option C is wrong because the International Trade Centre is a joint agency of the WTO and the United Nations that helps small exporters and is not what the WTO replaced. Option D is wrong because the OECD is a separate grouping of mainly developed economies with its seat in Paris.