The problem of international liquidity is related to the non-availability of

The correct answer is C) dollars and other hard currencies. International liquidity means the stock of assets that countries can use to settle cross-border payments and meet deficits, and those assets are mainly widely accepted reserve currencies such as the US dollar, euro, pound and yen.

• A) Goods and services is wrong. These are the subject of trade. They are not a settlement medium, and a country cannot pay its import bill with a surplus of goods it has not yet sold.
• B) Gold and silver is wrong. Gold is a reserve asset, but it is not the everyday medium of international settlement, and it lost its official monetary role after the Jamaica Accords of 1976. Silver has no such role at all.
• D) Exportable surplus is wrong. It is a trade concept. A surplus only becomes liquidity once it is converted into hard currency.

The concept links to the Bretton Woods system, the creation of SDRs by the IMF in 1969, and the Triffin dilemma, where a reserve-currency country must run deficits to supply liquidity and so weakens confidence in that currency. This is a useful Mains angle on the global monetary order and on why emerging economies build forex reserves.

Trap: aspirants pick gold because it is the classic reserve asset, or pick exportable surplus because it sounds like a trade-balance idea. Liquidity is about the currency needed to settle payments, not the goods or the metal behind them.