The consumer price index (CPI) in Bangladesh is expected to grow up ne

Question

The consumer price index (CPI) in Bangladesh is expected to grow up next month because of an increase in the prices of selected food items.

Which of the following cannot be inferred from the argument?

A. The food prices have already risen sharply.
B. People started rationing their food consumption.
C. Food items claim a majority share of items in CPI.
D. Changes in food prices are quickly reflected in CPI.
E. There had been no significant decrease in prices of other items that make CPI.

AkshdeepS · Answer

IMO it is B.

A. The food prices have already risen sharply.

We can expect this to some extent as sentence says "because of an increase in the prices of selected food items." Though "risen sharply" is a bit extreme. 
 
  B. People started rationing their food consumption.

We can not infer that when CPI grows people start rationing their food consumption. Though, this is an expected general reaction by people, passage does not support this.

C. Food items claim a majority share of items in CPI.

If food items are becoming costly and CPI is increasing, this may mean that food items play a major role in taking CPI to higher levels.

D. Changes in food prices are quickly reflected in CPI.

We can infer this as passage talks about only food items, and it also says as now the price in food items are becoming costly, next month we can expect CPI to rise. This is quick enough .

E. There had been no significant decrease in prices of other items that make CPI.

This can be inferred as passage says "food items are becoming costly, and the CPI is expected to grow." This means other items share significantly lesser burden to raise CPI.

Fatineel · Answer

That was my process of thoughts too :

I would even say that answer B is a real world fallacy : it is an expected behavior irl but cannot be inferred from the passage, I believe the passage isn't about people's reaction to the CPI increase. 
Still I don't understand why C is the answer

Angad97 · Answer

I go with C not because I got a valid reasoning behind this but because it seems to outweigh A.

A. The food prices have already risen sharply.
May or may not be the answer, let's keep it alive for now. The stem is silent about the current prices. It only says that the CPI is expected to grow next month. The current CPI may have remained unchanged for several years for all we know. At the same time, it may have been on the rise since the past couple months.

B. People started rationing their food consumption.
Can be inferred. Not the answer.
The stem clearly states that food prices are on the rise. As price of a product rises, we can expect its demand to fall. Hence people will start to ration their consumption.

C. Food items claim a majority share of items in CPI.
Cannot be inferred. 
The CPI is an index of general price levels. Even if the price of low-demand consumer good rises, the CPI will tend to increase. The increase may be minuscule but the increase will happen. The stem is silent about the magnitude of increase in the CPI - will it rise by 1% or 5%. We cannot infer the weight of these selected food items from the information given.
Think we can scratch off A since this statement clearly outweighs A.

D. Changes in food prices are quickly reflected in CPI.
Can be inferred. The stem implies that the CPI will be updated next month.

E. There had been no significant decrease in prices of other items that make CPI.
Can be inferred. The stem is silent on everything else and states that the CPI is expected to increase because of the rise in the prices of select food items. It is placing all the weight on these food items.

Fatineel · Answer

The consumer price index (CPI) in Bangladesh is expected to grow up next month because of an increase in the prices of selected food items.

Which of the following cannot be inferred from the argument?

A. The food prices have already risen sharply.
B. People started rationing their food consumption.
C. Food items claim a majority share of items in CPI.
D. Changes in food prices are quickly reflected in CPI.
E. There had been no significant decrease in prices of other items that make CPI.

Why the OA is C not B ?

Angad97 · Answer

Hi
The question requires you to be familiar with a little bit of economics - as price rises demand falls. Here rationing of the foods means that people are cutting down on their consumption of food i.e. demand is falling. 
The OA is not B because the stem clearly states that food prices are on the rise. As the price of food is increasing, we can definitely infer that people will reduce their consumption of food and hence ration their consumption. They not eat lavishly. They will only eat what is needed. They will switch to basic food items and not eat luxury food items.

The OA is C. Try to think of this question has a Data Sufficiency problem from the Quant section. 
The CPI is nothing but an average of prices of all consumer goods. Suppose a certain good is purchased by only 10% of the population. An increase in the price of this good will also cause the CPI to rise, despite it being a minority purchase. 
The information given to us by the question is not sufficient to say that the weight of food items in the CPI (which is nothing but an average) is a majority (i.e. more than 50%). There could be 5 food items and 100 non-food items in the CPI. Or there could be 100 food items and 5 non-food items.

Hope it helps.

AkshdeepS · Answer

Bunuel  : Can you please verify the OA again?

Thank you.

Fatineel · Answer

Thank you for your input ! I can see the logic behind the OA. 
But to be honest I will still place B and C as two answers I can't infer from the passage, simply because in front of GMAT question I focus more on the given info, but not on my prior knowledge (I did finance and economics and in the past I had difficulties concealing irl info and focusing of the info from the passage)

VerbalBot · Answer

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The consumer price index (CPI) in Bangladesh is expected to grow up ne

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