SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 6 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

In which of the following situations does the government run a deficit budget?

(a)When the government expenditure and revenue both are zero.
(b)When the government revenue exceeds expenditure.
(c)When the government expenditure equals revenue.
(d)When the government expenditure exceeds revenue.

Answer

Why

Correct — D. A budget states what the government expects to receive and what it plans to spend. When planned spending is larger than expected receipts, the gap must be borrowed, and that budget is a deficit budget.

Expenditure exceeding revenue is the definition itself, which is option (d).

The other two live cases have their own names: receipts above expenditure is a surplus budget, and the two exactly equal is a balanced budget.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
When the government expenditure and revenue both are zero. — A government with no revenue and no expenditure has no budget to describe. This is not a recognised budget type, only a distractor built by zeroing both terms.
(b)
When the government revenue exceeds expenditure. — Revenue above expenditure is a surplus budget — the opposite case, and the trap on this item, because it differs from the key only in which term is larger.
(c)
When the government expenditure equals revenue. — Expenditure exactly equal to revenue is a balanced budget, the ideal of classical public finance, not a deficit.

Concept

Three budget positions come from the same comparison.

Balanced — receipts equal expenditure. Surplus — receipts exceed expenditure. Deficit — expenditure exceeds receipts.

A deficit budget is financed by borrowing, and it is not automatically a failure. Keynesian public finance treats deficit spending as the deliberate instrument for lifting demand in a slowdown, which is why most modern governments present one.

India's budget documents then break the gap into named measures — fiscal deficit, revenue deficit, primary deficit — each covering a different slice of the same shortfall.

The option says revenue where a budget document would say receipts. Read it as total receipts, which is what the definition of a deficit budget compares expenditure against.

Key facts

A deficit budget is one in which estimated expenditure exceeds estimated receipts.
A surplus budget has receipts above expenditure and a balanced budget has the two equal.
Fiscal deficit is total expenditure minus total receipts other than borrowings.
Primary deficit is the fiscal deficit minus interest payments.

Study next

Fiscal deficit, revenue deficit and primary deficit — the exact formulasThe FRBM Act and its deficit targetsRevenue receipts and capital receipts in the Union Budget

Common traps

Confusing a deficit budget with the fiscal deficit — one is a type of budget, the other a measured number
Assuming a deficit budget is by definition bad policy

SSC states the situation and asks you to name it, or names the type and asks for the situation. Hold the three positions as one comparison and both directions are covered.

Related PYQs

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