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[moloy]

384.In Holland, a larger percentage of the gross national product is spent on defense of their coasts from rising seas than is spent on military defense in the United States
(A) In Holland, a larger percentage of the gross national product is spent on defense of their coasts from rising seas than is spent on military defense in the United States.
(B) In Holland they spend a larger percentage of their gross national product on defending their coasts from rising seas than the United States does on military defense.
(C) A larger percentage of Holland's gross national product is spent on defending their coasts from rising seas than the United States spends on military defense.
(D) Holland spends a larger percentage of its gross national product defending its coasts from rising seas than the military defense spending of the United States.
(E) Holland spends a larger percentage of its gross national product on defending its coasts from rising seas than the United States does on military defense.
Please give me the explanation for ANS E which is given as correct ans

[vijay_venky]

two things that are important here are parallelism and pronoun

1.pronoun: the use of "their" in the original sentence is not referring to anything that is the reason we need to change this reference,
2. parallelism:as we change the aforementioned reference we must be careful not to ignore the parallelism in the comparison between Holland and United States,

both of them are correct in only one option and that is E

[JEnIUS]

I totaly agree with "vijay_venky" comments. a). subject-pronoun agreement b) Parallelism :- the two main points for these question.

[OGMATTERS]

I think the most important lesson we can learn from the OP is to use the spoiler button so other people have a chance to practice with the question.

E should be correct because it is comparing the spending of each country.

[AnuragRatna]

My vote to OPTION E

[tathastuGMAT]

Hey moloy,
There are a few issues with this sentence, but as always let's figure out its underlying meaning.

The author is blatantly comparing Holland's GDP percentage allocation towards coastal environmental issues to America's allocation on defence. He probably wants to point out that America's allocation is meagre or that Holland is splurging.

A) Pronoun "their" refers to Holland and its number is therefore wrong. It should be "its".
B) Pronoun "they" is completely unnecessary. Pronouns are used to replace a noun; in this case a plausible replacement is lacking.
C) This sentence changes the comparison's subject; we are comparing "a larger percentage of GDP" to the United States. This comparison is clearly wrong. You logically cannot compare an amount of money to a country. You can either compare two countries or two amounts of money.
D) Same story here. We have a wrong comparison; Holland is compared with the military defence spending.
E) This is the correct choice. Every issue has been addressed and fixed. The comparison is between two states; pronoun "its" undoubtedly refers to Holland.

Hope it helps,
-tathastuGMAT