Let's look at the meanings of the given words.
Competing: strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others.
Claiming: state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof.
Contends: struggle to surmount (a difficulty).
Travelling: go from one place to another, typically over a distance of some length.
Challenge: invite (someone) to engage in a contest.
The blank requires a verb to connect the noun phrase 'global economy' with the noun 'roadblocks'. The verb that comes after the helping verb 'is' should be in its participle form. According to this, options (c) and (e) are eliminated because they are not participle verbs. The verbs 'claiming' and 'travelling' don't provide a coherent meaning to the sentence.
Among the given options, only the verb 'competing' fits in the sentence.
Filling the blank with 'competing' implies that the global economy is in a struggle to deal with significant roadblocks.
So, the correct sentence is: In short, the global economy is competing with significant roadblocks and recessionary risks.
Hence, option (a) is the correct answer.
Note:
Participle: A word formed from a verb (e.g. going, gone, being, been) and used as an adjective (e.g. working woman, burnt toast) or a noun (e.g. good breeding). In English, participles are also used to make compound verb forms (e.g. is going, has been). Consider the sentences given below:
Dancing at the party, the women fell on the ground.
Encouraged by her parents, Rita went on to pursue her passion.
The highlighted word in the first sentence is of the form Verb + ing and is used as a present participle. It is used to denote an action that is going on or incomplete or imperfect.
The highlighted word in the second sentence is of the form verb + ed. It is used as a past participle. It denotes the completed action or state of the thing spoken of.
A past participle ends with the following: -ed, -d, -t, -en, or -n.
One should take great care and never get confused between a gerund and a present participle. They use the same forms but perform different functions: a gerund is a verbal noun, while a present participle is a verbal adjective.
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