SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 20 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 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

What is a key factor assessed in the Global Firepower Military Strength Ranking 2025?

(a)Economic Stability
(b)Cultural Influence
(c)Defense Budget
(d)Healthcare Spending

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Global Firepower (GFP) says its PowerIndex uses over 60 factors, grouped under manpower, air, land and naval forces, natural resources, logistics, geography and finances.

Defense Budget is a named factor in the finances group, beside external debt, purchasing power parity, and reserves of foreign exchange and gold.

Economic stability, cultural influence and healthcare spending are not on GFP's factor list by name.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Economic Stability — The nearest trap. GFP does weigh financial standing, but through named values — defence budget, external debt, PPP and foreign reserves. "Economic stability" is not itself one of its factors.
(b)
Cultural Influence — Cultural influence is soft power, and it is not among GFP's factor groups: manpower, armed forces, finances, logistics, natural resources and geography.
(d)
Healthcare Spending — Healthcare spending is not one of GFP's financial values. Those are defence budget, external debt, purchasing power parity, and foreign-exchange and gold reserves.

Concept

Global Firepower is a website that publishes an annual ranking of national military strength.

Its PowerIndex combines the factors into one score, and a lower score means a stronger military: 0.0000 would be a perfect score.

The 2025 ranking put the United States, Russia, China and India in the top four. GFP notes that a change in rank from one year to the next can come from changes to its formula, not only from changes in a country's forces.

Option (a) is where a careful candidate hesitates, because GFP's finance values are partly economic. The key rewards the factor GFP lists by name, and Defense Budget is the one option that names an item on that list.

Key facts

Global Firepower 2025 ranking: 1 United States, 2 Russia, 3 China, 4 India, 5 South Korea.
GFP's finance values are defence budget, external debt, purchasing power parity, and reserves of foreign exchange and gold.
A lower PowerIndex score means greater conventional military strength.
GlobalFirepower.com ranks 145 nations in its 2025 edition.

Study next

SIPRI's annual data on world military expenditureThe Global Peace Index of the Institute for Economics and PeaceHow composite indices are built from weighted indicators

Common traps

Choosing "Economic Stability" because GFP weighs finances — it scores specific money values, and defence budget is the one among the options.
Reading a higher PowerIndex as stronger — in GFP, lower is stronger.

Here the rank is not asked. The stem wants a factor behind the index, so learn what an index measures as well as who tops it.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Economic Scene — all 75 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.