BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 61 of 143

Correct — B, 17.7%, 27.6% and 54.7%. The Economic Survey 2023-24, tabled in Parliament on 22 July 2024 and written under Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran, prints the figures verbatim in Chapter 1, paragraph 1.12: "The shares of the agriculture, industry and services sector in overall GVA at current prices were 17.7 per cent, 27.6 per cent and 54.7 per cent respectively in FY24." Three qualifiers in the stem must be honoured together, and each one moves the number — the year is FY24 (2023-24), the aggregate is gross value added and not GDP, and the valuation is at current prices, not constant 2011-12 prices. All four options are engineered to add up to exactly 100, so a candidate cannot eliminate anything by totalling them; the discriminator is the services figure of 54.7, which only option (b) carries. The same Survey corroborates it from a second direction — its services chapter plots the services share of overall GVA at 54.7 per cent for FY24. The composition also matches the growth story recorded in the same chapter: real GVA at 2011-12 prices grew 7.2 per cent in FY24 while real GDP grew 8.2 per cent (the gap explained by net taxes growing 19.1 per cent), and within that GVA growth industry expanded about 9.5 per cent and services about 7.6 per cent against agriculture's roughly 1.4 per cent, held down by an erratic and unevenly distributed 2023 monsoon. A slow-growing agriculture and a fast-growing industry are precisely what push agriculture down to 17.7 and industry up to 27.6.

• (a)18.7%, 28.6% and 52.7% — Every figure here sits exactly one percentage point away from the Survey's — 18.7 against 17.7, 28.6 against 27.6, 52.7 against 54.7. It is built for the candidate who remembers the shape of the answer (services largest, agriculture smallest) but not the digits. The services number is the tell: 52.7 understates the sector by two full points.
• (c)16.7%, 26.6% and 56.7% — This one over-corrects in the fashionable direction — it trims agriculture and industry by a point each and pushes services to 56.7 per cent, on the instinct that India's services share is far above half and climbing steeply. The Survey's FY24 figure is 54.7 per cent, two points lower, and industry at 27.6 per cent is understated here.
• (d)17.7%, 28.6% and 53.7% — The most dangerous option, and the reason partial recall fails: it reproduces the agriculture share exactly right at 17.7 per cent and then shifts one percentage point from services to industry. A candidate who has memorised only the agriculture figure will stop reading at the first number. The pair that actually has to be carried is 27.6 for industry and 54.7 for services.

Gross Value Added is the value of output minus the value of intermediate consumption — what production actually adds to the economy at each stage. India's national accounts report GVA at basic prices and GDP at market prices, linked by the identity GDP = GVA + product taxes − product subsidies, which is why GDP and GVA growth rates differ in any year when indirect tax collections or subsidies move sharply. Sectoral shares are always quoted from GVA rather than GDP because taxes cannot sensibly be assigned to a producing sector. The three-fold split — agriculture (with forestry and fishing), industry (mining, manufacturing, electricity and construction) and services — is the standard presentation, and at current prices the shares reflect both real output and relative price movements, so a year of weak farm prices lowers agriculture's share even if physical output holds up.

Reasoning to the answer is a matter of anchoring on one number rather than three. Because all four options sum to 100, the totals test that works on many percentage questions is useless here by design. Fix instead on the services share, which is the figure most often quoted in press coverage of the Survey and the Budget: 54.7 per cent for FY24. That single anchor kills (a) at 52.7, (c) at 56.7 and (d) at 53.7 in one stroke. The second anchor, useful when the services number will not come, is that agriculture's share had fallen below 18 per cent — which eliminates (a) and (c) and leaves the industry figure to decide between (b) and (d). Note also that the question is dated to the Survey rather than to a later data vintage: MoSPI revises these estimates each January and February, so a figure read off a 2026 release will not match a question keyed to the Economic Survey 2023-24.

• Economic Survey 2023-24, Chapter 1, para 1.12: shares of agriculture, industry and services in overall GVA at current prices in FY24 were 17.7%, 27.6% and 54.7%
• The Survey was tabled in Parliament on 22 July 2024, a day before the Union Budget 2024-25, and was prepared under Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran
• India's real GDP grew 8.2% in FY24 while real GVA at 2011-12 prices grew 7.2%; the wedge came from net taxes at constant prices growing 19.1%
• Real GVA growth in FY24 was uneven by sector — industry about 9.5%, services about 7.6% and agriculture about 1.4%, the last hit by erratic and unevenly distributed 2023 monsoon rainfall
• GDP at market prices = GVA at basic prices + product taxes − product subsidies, which is why sectoral composition is always reported from GVA and never from GDP

• Quoting shares out of GDP instead of GVA — sectoral composition is only ever reported from GVA, because indirect taxes belong to no producing sector
• Mixing current-price shares with constant-price shares; the question specifies current prices, and the two sets of numbers are not the same
• Using a later data vintage — MoSPI revises FY24 estimates repeatedly, but the question is keyed to what the Economic Survey 2023-24 printed

BPSC asks this as a straight recall of a printed line from the most recent Economic Survey — a set of three numbers, all options summing to 100, so only exact memory of one anchor figure saves you. UPSC almost never asks the digits; it asks for the ordering of sectors by contribution, the direction of the trend since 1980, or a statement-based judgement about whether the services share is rising, which rewards understanding of structural change rather than a memorised table.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the Economic Survey 2023-24, India's real GDP growth in FY24 was

  • (a)7.2 per cent
  • (b)8.2 per cent
  • (c)9.1 per cent
  • (d)6.8 per cent

  Answer(b) 8.2 per cent — the Survey records real GDP growth of 8.2 per cent in FY24, with real GVA growing 7.2 per cent; 7.2 is the GVA figure, offered here as the trap.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In India's national accounts, GDP at market prices is obtained from GVA at basic prices by

  • (a)adding product taxes and subtracting product subsidies
  • (b)adding product subsidies and subtracting product taxes
  • (c)adding both product taxes and product subsidies
  • (d)subtracting both product taxes and product subsidies

  Answer(a) adding product taxes and subtracting product subsidies — this bridge is why GDP growth (8.2% in FY24) exceeded GVA growth (7.2%) when net taxes rose 19.1%.