Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments — Current vs Capital Account, and Who Does What at the IMF, World Bank and WTO

Two headlines can run on the same morning without contradicting each other: 'India's trade deficit widens' and 'India posts a current account surplus'. Students read that as a mistake in one of the papers. It is not. The two sentences are counting different things, and knowing which is which is worth a mark in almost every general-awareness section.

This card set does two jobs. First, it takes apart the balance of payments — what goes in the current account, what goes in the capital account, and why the total always balances even when the newspaper says it does not. Second, it sorts out the international institutions that students blur together: the IMF, the World Bank group, the WTO, and the newer Asian banks.

Almost every question here is a placement question. Where does a remittance from Dubai go? Who lends for a thirty-year power project? Which body settles a trade dispute? Get the placements right and the whole topic collapses into about twenty facts.

1. Money sent home by an Indian worker employed in Dubai is recorded in India's balance of payments under:

2. Which of the following best states the difference between balance of trade and balance of payments?

3. The Bretton Woods Conference, which led to the creation of the IMF and the World Bank, was held in:

4. The World Trade Organization came into existence on:

5. Which arm of the World Bank Group provides interest-free or highly concessional credits to the world's poorest countries?

6. Which of the following currencies is NOT part of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights basket?

7. If the Indian rupee depreciates against the US dollar, the most direct effect is that:

8. The headquarters of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank are located respectively in: