The G20 members represent
1. around 85% of the global GDP
2. about 50% of the global trade
3. about two-thirds of the world population
Which of the above statistics is/are correct?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Only 1 and 3. This item is not testing an estimate; it is testing whether the candidate read the G20 presidency's own one-line description of the grouping. Through India's presidency (1 December 2022 to 30 November 2023) the official website g20.org carried this sentence under 'G20 Members': 'The G20 members represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.' Statements 1 and 3 of the stem reproduce that sentence almost word for word — 'around 85% of the global GDP' and 'about two-thirds of the world population'. Statement 2 is the one the setter altered. The official figure for trade is over 75 per cent; the stem offers 'about 50%', which understates it by a third and is therefore wrong. So exactly two of the three statistics stand, and the answer is (b). Two supporting checks make this safe rather than merely memorised. On output, the nineteen G20 countries together account for roughly 85 per cent of gross world product, so statement 1 survives independent verification. On trade, the same nineteen handle about three-quarters of world merchandise trade — a figure repeated by the OECD and by member governments' own G20 pages — so a 50 per cent claim is not a rounding difference but a different order of magnitude. The one honest caveat is on statement 3: a strict head-count of the nineteen member countries comes to roughly 56 per cent of humanity, and the 'two-thirds' figure depends on counting the European Union's other member states alongside them. It is nevertheless the official phrasing, it is what the presidency published, and after the African Union was admitted at the New Delhi summit the grouping's share of world population rose to close to four-fifths — so the statement errs, if at all, on the low side.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Right to reject statement 2, but wrong to reject statement 3 as well. This is the answer of a candidate who remembers the 85 per cent GDP figure — much the most quoted of the three — and then treats the population claim as an exaggeration because the G20 is 'only twenty countries'. The arithmetic defeats that instinct: China and India alone are about 2.8 billion people, and adding the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Mexico and the rest brings the group past half the planet before the European Union's other members are counted at all.  (c) The commonest wrong answer, because 'about 50% of the global trade' sounds like the cautious, defensible claim in a list of large numbers — a candidate reading quickly assumes the modest figure must be the safe one. The setter has inverted the usual trap. Here the understated statistic is the false one: the G20's share of world trade is above 75 per cent, not around half. Whenever an all-of-the-above option is on offer, the discipline is to check the least dramatic statement as carefully as the most dramatic one.  (d) This keeps the single false statement and discards a true one, so it is wrong twice over. It is chosen by candidates who accept the trade figure at face value and then baulk at 'two-thirds of the world population', reasoning that the G20 excludes most of Africa. That reasoning was already weak in 2023 and became weaker three weeks before this paper was written, when the African Union — 55 member states, some 1.4 billion people — was admitted to the G20 as a permanent member at the New Delhi summit.

Concept: The G20, or Group of Twenty, is the premier forum for international economic cooperation. It was created in 1999, in the wake of the East Asian financial crisis, as a table at which the finance ministers and central bank governors of systemically important economies could talk to one another; the global financial crisis pushed it up to the level of heads of state and government at the Washington summit of November 2008, and in 2009 it was formally designated the premier forum for international economic cooperation. Its membership is nineteen countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States — plus the European Union, and since the New Delhi summit of September 2023 the African Union as well. It has no charter, no treaty and no permanent secretariat: the presidency rotates annually and the host country runs the agenda, supported by a troika of the previous, current and next presidencies. Work is split between a Finance Track of finance ministries and central banks and a Sherpa Track covering everything else, from trade and health to digital public infrastructure and climate. Because it issues no binding law, the G20's authority is entirely a function of the weight of its members, which is why every presidency puts the same three ratios — share of world output, share of world trade, share of world population — at the head of its own literature. Those ratios are the grouping's claim to speak for the world economy, and they are what this question is checking.

State PCS 2023 Q32 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q32 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer