As per IMF’s ‘World Economic Outlook’ (April 2025), India’s nominal GDP in 2025 will be US $ _____ trillion.
- (a)4.187
- (b)4.871
- (c)5.171
- (d)5.923
Correct — A, 4.187.
The International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook of April 2025 placed India's nominal GDP for 2025 at US $ 4.187 trillion. On that same set of projections India's 2025 figure edged past Japan's, which is what lay behind the reporting that India had moved into fourth place among the world's economies.
The digits are only usable if you can also place them. India's nominal GDP was a little under US $ 4 trillion in 2024, so 4.187 is a rise of roughly seven per cent in dollar terms — the size of one-year move an economy of this scale actually records.
Carry away the band rather than the decimals: India's output valued at market exchange rates sits in the low US $ 4 trillion range in 2025, while the US $ 5 trillion figure is a stated policy target for a later year, not the IMF's estimate for 2025.
- (b)4.871 — This is the keyed figure's own four digits — 4, 1, 8, 7 — read back in a different order, so it is the right answer to a test of how carefully you read the decimals, not to the question asked.
It also fails the size check. Moving from a little under US $ 4 trillion in 2024 to 4.871 would mean the dollar value of India's output rose by about a quarter inside one year.
- (c)5.171 — A figure just past five is the pull of India's much-discussed 'US $ 5 trillion economy' target, which is an aspiration attached to a future year rather than an IMF estimate for 2025.
The April 2025 World Economic Outlook put the 2025 number in the four-trillion range. Reaching 5.171 from a base a little under US $ 4 trillion would require a one-year gain of roughly a third.
- (d)5.923 — Approaching US $ 6 trillion, this is roughly where the projection path sits several years later — about what compounding the recent dollar-terms pace for several more years would deliver, not what the April 2025 report assigned to 2025.
Against a 2024 base a little under US $ 4 trillion it implies a jump of roughly half in twelve months.
Nominal GDP is the value of a country's final output measured at current prices, with no adjustment for inflation.
To compare it across countries it is converted into US dollars at the market exchange rate. The dollar figure therefore moves with two things at once: how fast output and prices grow in rupees, and how the rupee moves against the dollar.
That is why India's dollar GDP can grow more slowly than its rupee GDP in a year when the rupee weakens.
The World Economic Outlook is the IMF's flagship projection report. Its country tables are widely quoted when economies are ranked by size, which is how a single line in a statistical appendix becomes a headline.
Each vintage revises the previous one, so a figure carries a date. The number in this question belongs to the April 2025 edition and to the year 2025, and quoting it without both labels is what turns a correct fact into a wrong answer.
- The World Economic Outlook is published by the International Monetary Fund.
- The full WEO report comes out twice a year, in April and October, with shorter WEO Updates in between.
- The April 2025 WEO put India's nominal GDP for 2025 at US $ 4.187 trillion.
- On those same April 2025 projections India's 2025 nominal GDP moved above Japan's, the basis for reports of India as the world's fourth-largest economy.
- India's nominal GDP was a little under US $ 4 trillion in 2024, so the 2025 figure is a single-digit percentage rise in dollar terms.
- Nominal GDP is measured at current prices; real GDP values output at the prices of a base year.
- Converted at purchasing power parity rather than market exchange rates, India's GDP is far larger and its rank higher.
India's nominal GDP was a little under US $ 4 trillion in 2024. Read against that base, one of the four options implies a plausible single-year change and the other three imply jumps of a quarter or more.
- The decimals are close and two of the options are built from the same four digits, so a fast option-scan can land on a transposition.
- Answering with the US $ 5 trillion economy target, which is a policy goal attached to a future year, instead of the IMF's estimate for the year named in the stem.
- Attaching the figure to the wrong publisher — the WEO is the IMF's, and the World Bank and the World Economic Forum publish their own reports with their own numbers.
- Importing a purchasing-power-parity figure into a question that asks for a market-exchange-rate number; the two measures are far apart for India.
- Quoting a number from a different WEO vintage — an April edition and an October edition of the same year carry different projections.
- Confusing India's total GDP with its per-capita income, which is a much smaller number in dollars.
This appears in three shapes. The plainest is a fill-in-the-figure item like this one, where the stem names the report, the edition and the year and asks for the value.
A second shape names the statistic and asks for the source — which body publishes the World Economic Outlook, or which report carried a stated projection.
The third is conceptual: nominal versus real GDP, the deflator, or the gap between market-rate and PPP measures, where no memorised figure helps and the definition does.
UPSC_2014_GS1_Q992014The same publication is the subject, but from the other end: that item asks which organisation brings out the 'World Economic Outlook', while this one takes the IMF's authorship as given in the stem and asks for a figure inside the April 2025 edition. Together they cover both halves of a report-based question — the source and the number.
MAINS_2025_GS-IV_CS12025The same data point, used differently. That Mains case study opens by treating India's fourth-largest-economy status 'as per IMF projection' as settled background and then asks about accountability in the use of public funds; here the identical projection is the thing being recalled, to three decimal places, in a prelims fill-in-the-figure item.
CDS_GK_2021_I_Q12021Shares the term 'nominal GDP' but tests the definition rather than a value — it turns on nominal GDP being measured at current prices, not constant ones. It supplies the concept this UKPSC item assumes: what exactly is being counted before the number is quoted.
RPSC_2023_PRE_Prelims2023_Q482023The same kind of recall — a published nominal-GDP statistic that has to be matched to a close set of decimals — but at a different level and from a different source: Rajasthan's share of India's nominal GDP from state advance estimates, against India's own dollar total from an IMF projection.
HPSC_2021_PRE_GSII_Q972021Also conceptual rather than numerical, and one step further along: it tests the direction of the GDP deflator, the ratio of nominal to real GDP. Useful beside this item because it fixes what the word 'nominal' contributes to a stem that otherwise looks like pure figure recall.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The 'World Economic Outlook' and the 'Global Financial Stability Report' are both published by:
- (a)The World Bank
- (b)The International Monetary Fund
- (c)The World Economic Forum
- (d)The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Answerb — Both are flagship publications of the IMF. The WEO carries growth and output projections; the Global Financial Stability Report reviews risks to the global financial system.The World Bank's comparable projection volume is Global Economic Prospects, not either of these. The World Economic Forum is a separate Geneva-based body with its own report series, and the OECD's projection volume is its own Economic Outlook.
- practice — not a real PYQ
India's nominal GDP measured in US dollars can grow more slowly than India's nominal GDP measured in rupees during the same year. The most direct reason is that:
- (a)The rupee depreciated against the US dollar over that year
- (b)Real output contracted while prices rose
- (c)The GDP deflator fell below 100
- (d)Population grew faster than output
Answera — The dollar figure is the rupee figure divided by the exchange rate, so a weaker rupee shrinks the dollar value even while rupee output is rising. That is the only one of the four that opens a gap between the two series.Option (b) would slow both series alike. Option (c) concerns the price index used to strip inflation out of nominal GDP and does not touch the currency conversion. Option (d) affects per-capita income, not total GDP in either currency.
- practice — not a real PYQ
When national GDPs are compared using purchasing power parity instead of market exchange rates, India's measured GDP appears:
- (a)Smaller, because PPP conversion excludes the services sector
- (b)Larger, because domestic price levels in India are below those of the United States
- (c)Unchanged, because PPP alters only per-capita figures and not aggregates
- (d)Smaller, because PPP conversion counts only traded goods
Answerb — PPP conversion replaces the market exchange rate with a rate that equalises the cost of a comparable basket of goods and services. Where domestic prices sit below those of the reference country, the same output converts into a larger figure.Option (a) fails because PPP baskets are built to cover services alongside goods, and option (d) for the same reason applied to non-traded items, which PPP exists to price properly.
Option (c) fails because the conversion is applied to the aggregate itself — which is why PPP and market-rate rankings differ.