Which one among the following financial institutions reports the monthly Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for services in India?

Correct — A, HSBC. India's monthly Purchasing Managers' Index for services is published as the HSBC India Services PMI, compiled from a survey of purchasing executives by S&P Global and sponsored by HSBC, which took over that sponsorship in 2023. The index is a private-sector business survey, not an official statistic: respondents report whether new business, output, employment and prices are higher, the same or lower than the previous month, and the answers are turned into a diffusion index where fifty is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. The Reserve Bank and the government publish other indicators, but the PMI is not one of them.

• (b)RBI — The Reserve Bank of India publishes a great deal of survey data, including consumer confidence and industrial outlook surveys, but the PMI is a private survey and not an RBI product.
• (c)HDFC — HDFC is a private bank with no role in compiling or sponsoring the Indian PMI series.
• (d)IDBI — IDBI is a bank, not a sponsor of business-survey indices, and it publishes no PMI.

A Purchasing Managers' Index is a diffusion index built from a monthly survey of firms. A reading above fifty means more firms report improvement than deterioration, so the sector is expanding; below fifty means the reverse; the distance from fifty indicates the pace, not the level, of activity. India has separate manufacturing and services indices and a composite that weights the two. Because the survey closes and publishes within days of the month ending, the PMI is one of the earliest reads on the economy, well ahead of official output data.

Two habits make this item easy. First, the PMI is named for its sponsor, and the sponsor has changed — the series was published under a different bank's name before HSBC took over in 2023, so a candidate relying on an old memory can be caught. Second, remember that the PMI is not an official statistic at all; anything asked about a monthly index of business sentiment is unlikely to belong to a central bank or a ministry. The word to hold on to is diffusion: the PMI measures the direction of change reported by firms, which is why a falling PMI above fifty still means growth, only slower.

• The monthly services PMI for India is published as the HSBC India Services PMI, compiled by S&P Global.
• A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion over the previous month and below 50 indicates contraction.
• India has separate manufacturing and services PMIs and a composite index combining them.
• The PMI is a private business survey, not an official government statistic.
• HSBC replaced the earlier sponsor of the Indian PMI series in 2023.

• Assuming a widely quoted national indicator must be published by the central bank.
• Reading a falling PMI above fifty as contraction rather than slower growth.
• Carrying the name of the previous sponsor of the Indian PMI series.

Asked as a plain source-identification item, testing whether you know that the PMI is a sponsored private survey rather than an official release.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  A Purchasing Managers' Index reading of 54 for a month indicates

  • (a)contraction compared with the previous month
  • (b)expansion compared with the previous month
  • (c)no change from the previous month
  • (d)an output level 54 per cent of capacity

  Answer(b) expansion compared with the previous month — any reading above 50 signals expansion.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Purchasing Managers' Index for India is compiled by

  • (a)the Reserve Bank of India
  • (b)the National Statistical Office
  • (c)S&P Global
  • (d)NITI Aayog

  Answer(c) S&P Global — published under HSBC sponsorship as the HSBC India PMI.