What was India's retail inflation rate based on the Consumer Price Index in August 2026?

The correct answer is rural 5.23 per cent and urban 4.31 per cent. In August 2026 villages saw prices rise faster than cities, and the release gives these two figures against a combined headline rate of 4.82 per cent. Option A simply reverses the two rates, and reversing rural and urban numbers is the commonest trap set in this kind of question, so the order must be read carefully. Option C is wrong because those are the rural and urban rates of food inflation for the same month, taken from the Consumer Food Price Index rather than from the general index; they are genuine figures but they answer a different question. Option D is wrong because those numbers do not belong to August at all. A useful way to hold all of this together is to note that in this release the rural number is larger than the urban number in both the general series and the food series.

The correct answer is silver jewellery, which stood first among the key items with high inflation in August 2026. Option B is wrong because ginger came second on that list, below silver jewellery. Option A is wrong because onion was placed third. Option D is wrong because garlic was fourth, and jewellery of gold, diamond and platinum was fifth, which means that two of the five fastest rising items were forms of jewellery. Candidates should also remember the other end of the table, since paper setters often ask about the items that grew cheaper instead: tomato recorded the steepest fall, followed by potato, then motor car and jeep, then lady's finger, and finally parwal and kundru. Learning the order in both tables is worth the effort, because questions are set either on the item that rose most or on the item that fell most, and the two lists are published together every month.

The correct answer is the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which issued these estimates for the month and for the cumulative period of the financial year. Option A is wrong because the finance ministry handles taxation, expenditure and the budget rather than the monthly trade release, although it does publish revenue collections. Option C is wrong because the statistics ministry brings out national income and labour force data, not the export and import bulletin. Option D is wrong because corporate affairs deals with company law and registration. One more caution is worth remembering with this release: the services figures for the latest month are an estimate, since the released data for that sector covers only the previous month, and the earlier months of the year have been revised using quarterly balance of payments data.

The correct answer is electronic goods, whose exports in the month climbed from 2.93 billion dollars a year earlier to 5.55 billion dollars, a jump the release lists first among the drivers of merchandise export growth. Option A is wrong; engineering goods did grow, but at a far smaller rate, rising from 9.87 billion dollars to 12.32 billion. Option B is wrong as well; petroleum products grew strongly in the month, yet their rate was lower than that of electronics. Option D is wrong because marine products appear only in the longer list of commodity groups with positive growth and are nowhere near the top. The lesson for an aspirant is to attach the highest growth rate of the month to electronics, and to remember that the release names the drivers in descending order of importance.

The correct answer is 399.27 billion US dollars, the cumulative figure for merchandise and services exports taken together over the five months of the current financial year covered by the release. Option A is the same cumulative export figure for the corresponding months of the previous financial year, and it is the number against which the growth rate is worked out, so it belongs in the comparison rather than in the answer. Option C is the cumulative import figure for the current period, which is larger than exports and therefore leaves a trade deficit. Option D is merchandise exports alone, that is goods without services, and a candidate who forgets that the headline number combines both will fall for it. Fix the pair together: the export value and the growth rate that goes with it.