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Question

Select the option that expresses the given sentence in direct voice.

The CEO announced that the company had lost a significant amount of revenue last year and that they were making difficult decisions to stay afloat.

This question was previously asked in
SSC CHSL 2025 Tier 1 Question Paper (21-Nov-2025) (Shift 1)
The correct answer is

The CEO announced, "The company lost a significant amount of revenue last year, and we are making difficult decisions to stay afloat."

Converting reported (indirect) speech back into direct speech reverses the usual back-shift, moving the tenses one step forward toward the present, and restores the speaker's exact words inside quotation marks.

The past perfect 'had lost' in the report goes forward to the simple past 'lost' that the CEO would actually have spoken.

The past continuous 'were making' moves forward to the present continuous 'are making'.

The pronoun 'they' changes back to the first-person 'we', since the CEO was speaking about the company as an insider.

The time expression 'last year' is retained as it stands, because within the quotation we reproduce the original spoken words.

Option A performs all of these changes correctly, giving 'lost', 'we are making' and 'last year' inside quotes.

Option B keeps 'had lost/were making', option C wrongly uses the present 'loses' with a past time, and option D alters 'last year' to 'the previous year' and keeps 'were making'.

The correct direct form is The CEO announced, "The company lost a significant amount of revenue last year, and we are making difficult decisions to stay afloat."

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Important Questions from Direct and Indirect Speech

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