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The country’s Commerce secretary says that spending on fue

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by BTGmoderatorRO » Sun Mar 18, 2018 12:40 am
The country's Commerce secretary says that spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared to about $20 billion in last year.

(A) that spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared with about $20 billion in last year

(B) that spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, and that is compared to about $20 billion last year

(C) spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared with about $20 billion last year

(D) spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, compared with about $20 billion reached in last year

(E) spending on fuel subsidies could reach $40 billion dollars in 2013, and that is compared to about $20 billion reached last year
OA is c
please, i want experts to help me with the solution to this question. Thanks so much for your solution
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by deloitte247 » Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:45 am
When using the word compare to show the difference between 2 or more scenarios, the proposition with should be use.
With this, we can eliminate option A, B and E from our possible options because the appropriate preposition to use in accompany 'compare' is 'with and not 'to'.

From the question, we can see that the country is yet to complete year 2013 and there is prediction of what they may be spend on fuel subsidy in that year. The usage of 'could' by the Country commerce secretary shows that there is a projection of $40 billion to be spend on fuel subsidies in 2013. From the concluding part of the sentence, $20 billion was completely used in the previous year. i.e they spent $20 billion on fuel subsidies the year prior to 2013. They did reach that figure because they didn't set a target of $20 billion initially.

Using "reached" in option D shows that there is a target which the country reached and this is not what the question is saying. Thus, option D is wrong.

We are left with option C which is the correct answer. Option C has a good sentence structure and the usage of preposition "with" is used appropriately with "compared"
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by ErikaPrepScholar » Sat Mar 31, 2018 1:55 pm
This sentence COMPARES two things. When we compare things, we want them to be parallel.

The first thing in our comparison is

$40 billion dollars in 2013
So our structure is dollar amount at some time

Looking through our answers, we can eliminate A, D, and E for spoiling the parallelism (note: "in last year" is tempting because we have "in 2013", but "last year" alone tells the time - "in last year" isn't idiomatic).

Comparing B and C, we can pick for two reasons 1) it is more concise and clear ("and that is" is unnecessary to the sentence, while the first "that" doesn't have any impact), and 2) "compared with" is the idiomatic choice in this sentence. However, the distinction between "compared with" and "compared to" is really subtle and probably one you wouldn't see on the GMAT itself.
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