G.K Updates

Finance & Banking

RBI fines Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Syndicate Bank

RBI fines Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Syndicate Bank

The RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 crore on Lakshmi Vilas Bank for non- compliance with certain provisions of directions issued by RBI on income recognition and asset classification norms.

• Similarly, Syndicate Bank has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 75 lakh for noncompliance with directions on frauds classification and disbursement of home loans.
• RBI imposed monetary penalty of 1 crore on Lakshmi Vilas Bank for non-compliance with certain provisions of directions issued by the RBI on Income Recognition and Asset Classification (IRAC) norms.
• RBI said a monetary penalty of 75 lakh has been imposed on Syndicate Bank for non-compliance with the directions issued by the RBI on frauds classification and reporting; innovative housing loan products wherein upfront disbursal of loans is done.

About Syndicate bank:

Syndicate Bank is one of the oldest and major commercial banks of India. At the time of its establishment, the bank was known as Canara Industrial and Banking Syndicate Limited.

Headquarters: Manipal

CEO: Mrutyunjay Mahapatra

About Lakshmi Vilas Bank:

Lakshmi Vilas Bank Limited was founded in 1926. The objective was to cater to the financial needs of people in and around Karur who were occupied in trading businesses, industry and agriculture.

Headquarters: Chennai

Founded: 1926

Finance & Banking

RBI relief for PMC depositors, limit hiked to Rs. 40,000

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has increased the withdrawal limit for depositors of Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank to Rs. 40,000.

• This is the third withdrawal limit increase by the RBI, in which it has increased the withdrawal amount. Earlier, the RBI set the withdrawal limit at Rs. 1,000 per account, which it increased to Rs. 10,000 later. On October 3, this limit was increased to Rs. 25,000. The RBI said it reviewed the bank’s liquidity position and, with a view to reducing the hardship of the depositors, it decided to further enhance the limit.
• With this relaxation more than 77 per cent of the depositors will be able to withdraw their entire account balance. In a statement, the RBI said a forensic auditor had been appointed by the administrator to look into the related transactions.

About PMC Bank:

Punjab & Maharashtra Co-operative Bank Limited also known as PMC Bank, is a Multi-State Co-operative Bank that began operations in 1983. It has 137 branches spread over half a dozen states of India and nearly 100 branches are in Maharashtra.

Founded: 1983

Finance & Banking

PSBs disburse Rs 81,781 crore in nine days: Finance Minister

The Finance Ministry said Rs 81,781 crore of loans were disbursed during the nine day loan mela organised by banks that began on October 1.

• Finance Secretary Rajeev Kumar said “Rs 81,781 crore was disbursed in the outreach programme. Of these, new loans accounted for Rs 34,342 crore.”
• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said banks had sufficient liquidity and efforts were being made to ensure that due payments are released to the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector by large corporates. She said banks had been asked to provide bill discounting facility to the MSME sector against payments due from the large corporates.

Economy

Retail inflation at 14-month high, wpi falls to 39-month low

The CPI inflation rate rose to a 14-month high of 3.99 percent in September, closer to an Average of the Reserve Bank of India-mandated target of 2-6 percent, from 3.28 percent in August.

• The WPI inflation rate, on the other hand, fell to a 39-month low of 33 percent. This has largely to do with more weight that the food items have in the CPI than in the WPI.
• Food items have around 15 percent weight in the WPI and more than 45 percent in the CPI.

Economy

Retail inflation at 14-month high, wpi falls to 39-month low

The CPI inflation rate rose to a 14-month high of 3.99 percent in September, closer to an Average of the Reserve Bank of India-mandated target of 2-6 percent, from 3.28 percent in August.

• The WPI inflation rate, on the other hand, fell to a 39-month low of 33 percent. This has largely to do with more weight that the food items have in the CPI than in the WPI.
• Food items have around 15 percent weight in the WPI and more than 45 percent in the CPI.

Economy

Moody’s cuts Indiabulls rating to ‘B2’

Global rating agency Moody’s has downgraded Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd’s corporate family rating (CFR) and the foreign-currency senior secured rating from “Ba2” to “B2”.

• The challenges for Indiabulls in getting access to funding was a key reason for the cut. Governance considerations were also a key driver behind this rating action

About Moody’s:

Moody's Corporation, often referred to as Moody's, is an American business and financial services company. It is the holding company for Moody's Investors Service, an American credit rating agency, and Moody's Analytics, an American provider of financial analysis software and services. 

Headquarters: New York, New York, United States

CEO: Raymond W. McDaniel Jr.

Economy

Indian economy on a shaky ground, says Nobel awardee

• Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, who won the 2019 Nobel for Economics, said Indian economy was on shaky ground.
• The data currently available do not hold any assurance for the country’s economic revival anytime soon, he stated.
• “The condition of the Indian economy is on shaky ground. After witnessing the present [growth] data, just can’t be sure about it [revival of economy in the near future]. In the last five-six years, we could at least witness some growth, but now that assurance is also gone,” Mr. Banerjee told a news channel from the U.S.
• The 58-year-old economist, who bagged the coveted prize jointly with his wife Esther Duflo and another economist Michael Kremer for his “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.
• Banerjee is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Economy

Pradhan for GST on petro products

• Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan yet again made an appeal to the Goods and Services Tax Council and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to bring petroleum products within the ambit of GST, while speaking at the India Energy Forum by CERAWeek.
• The third India Energy Forum by CERAWeek under the patronage of Honourable Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the Indian Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, was organised in New Delhi on October 13-15, 2019.

The following key topics have been focused upon

• India’s energy transition
• The provision of heat, light, and mobility
• Low-carbon & sustainable energy solutions for India
• Growing domestic oil and gas production and expanding use of natural gas across the economy
• Game-changing industry technologies
• Outlook for global oil and gas markets & investment
• An opportunity to understand the new government’s priorities and the response from the public and private sectors

Economy

Pradhan for GST on petro products

• Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan yet again made an appeal to the Goods and Services Tax Council and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to bring petroleum products within the ambit of GST, while speaking at the India Energy Forum by CERAWeek.
• The third India Energy Forum by CERAWeek under the patronage of Honourable Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the Indian Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, was organised in New Delhi on October 13-15, 2019.

The following key topics have been focused upon

• India’s energy transition
• The provision of heat, light, and mobility
• Low-carbon & sustainable energy solutions for India
• Growing domestic oil and gas production and expanding use of natural gas across the economy
• Game-changing industry technologies
• Outlook for global oil and gas markets & investment
• An opportunity to understand the new government’s priorities and the response from the public and private sectors

Economy

Rural unemployment rises, urban stabilises

• After having remained well below the eight per cent mark in each of the four weeks of September, the unemployment rate has risen above the eight per cent mark in October.
• During the first two weeks of the month, the unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent and 8.6 per cent, respectively. The increase has come about because of a reversal of the sharp drop in the unemployment rate in rural India.
• Unemployment in rural India had dropped to 6 per cent in September after having reached 7.5 per cent in August. At 6 per cent the rural unemployment rate was also the lowest in over a year.

Economy

IRCTC stock market debut smashes records; share prices surge 129%

• State-owned Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) saw its shares more than double during their stock market debut.
• The stock ended at Rs 733, with a gain of Rs 413, or 129 per cent, over its initial public offering (IPO) price of Rs 320.
• This listing-day gain is the highest-ever for a state-owned company, surpassing the record set by Power Grid, shares of which had soared 94 per cent in its trading debut in 2007.
• On an overall basis, the gains were the highest for an over Rs 500-crore IPO in a decade.
• The shares of Avenue Supermarts had climbed 114 per cent on its debut in 2017.
• Earlier this month, IRCTC’s Rs 640-crore IPO had become the most-subscribed maiden offering by a state-owned company, witnessing 111 times more demand than the shares on offer.

Several investors, who lost out on the IPO allotment, aggressively bought its shares in the secondary market, where shares worth over Rs 3,500 crore changed hands.

National News

National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) readies infrastructure to make all toll plazas

The use of FASTag on national highways is set to increase exponentially from December 1, as toll plazas in all the highways across the country will start accepting payments through the electronic mode.

• At present, the rule mandates at least one lane accepts FASTag, a RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) enabled device used to make electronic payments at toll plazas.
• From December, making toll payments by cash will become tedious for highway users. A notification said only one lane will be allowed to accept toll in cash. More than half of the toll plazas located across the national highways have already converted all their lanes to enable FASTag use.
• The move will enable users to zoom through toll plazas on national highways by making payments electronically. Of the 527 toll plazas, 380 have FASTag in all lanes, while more lanes are being made Fastag enabled.

Road Transport and Highways Minister- Nitin Gadkari

About FASTag:

• A FASTag is a reloadable tag that automatically deducts toll charges and allows a vehicle to pass through a toll gate without stopping for the payment. It uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to make cashless payments through a prepaid account linked to it.
• The tag is fixed to the windscreen of a vehicle and an RFID antenna in the canopy of the toll gate scans the QR code and the tag identification number, following which the boom barrier lifts to allow a vehicle to pass through.
• The tag, which is valid for five years, comes in seven different colours — violet, orange, yellow, green, pink, blue, black. Each colour is assigned to a particular category of vehicles.

National News

IIT-Madras, ExxonMobil in 5-year pact for biofuels research

• IIT Madras and ExxonMobil will collaborate for research on energy and biofuels.
• This comes in the backdrop of the Centre’s new biofuel policy which targets to convert the country’s biofuel industry into a $15.6 billion economy.
• The five year Joint research agreement focuses on biofuels, data analytics, gas conversion and transport, and is intended to find low emission solutions.

National News

Full court reference for Jaitley, Sushma on 15th October

• A full court reference will be held for former Union Ministers Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, who were both Supreme Court lawyers before they turned to politics. A full court reference is held for departed senior lawyers and judges of the apex court as a mark of respect and remembrance for their service and contribution to the court and the legal profession.
• Swaraj and Jaitley died this year a few months ago.
• Swaraj, as a Supreme Court lawyer, was part of the legal defence team of George Fernandes during the Emergency period in 1975. She served as the Union Minister of External Affairs in the first Narendra Modi government.
• Jaitley was the Additional Solicitor General of India in 1990. He led the Bofors scandal probe as ASG. He was the Union Law Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and handled portfolios from Defence to Finance in the first Modi government.

National News

Maharashtra and Gujarat lead 40% year-on-year spike in RERA registrations

• There has been a 40 per cent growth across the country in project registrations under the Real Estate Registration Act (RERA) in a year, from 32,306 projects at the end of September 2018 to 45,307 projects as on October 5, a news report said.
• The States with maximum project registrations in early October 2019 include Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
• Altogether, these five states account for a significant 81 per cent share with 36,576 projects registered.
• Among them, Maharashtra tops the list with 22,455 project registrations, said a report by Anarock Property Consultants.
• Interestingly, a year ago, Assam, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu and Puducherry saw no project registrations under RERA. This year, these states have cumulatively seen property registrations of 154 projects.

• The North-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Sikkim – which abstained earlier – will soon officially notify their RERA rules.
• West Bengal is the only state which has notified its own real estate law under West Bengal Housing Industry Regulatory Authority (WBHIRA).

International News

Economics Nobel for Abhijit, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, popularly called the Nobel Prize in Economics, to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”.

• Banerjee and Dr. Duflo are both affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Kremer is with Harvard University.
• The three will equally share the prize money of 9 million Swedish krona (about $916,798/Rs 6.53 crore).
• Their research focused on poverty alleviation. Duflo is the youngest to get this prize. They received the award for their contribution to reviving development economics, particularly through the popularisation of “randomised control trials” (RCTs) that break larger questions about policy interventions into smaller, easier to test studies.
• Experiment-based approach has transformed development economics” over the past decades. They mentioned specifically how, as a result of one such study, “more than 5 million Indian children have benefited from programmes of remedial tutoring in schools”.

International News

RCEP nations target final 10-day window to close talks by October 22

• Countries negotiating the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) have now decided on a final 10-day window to bilaterally sort out pending differences in the mega trade deal, after which the leaders of the 16 nations will step in.
• With last week’s ministerial meet proving inconclusive, a decision on crucial trade differences in 14 areas — if not resolved — will be taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he attends the 3rd RCEP leaders’ summit next month.
• With China, Currently, it is broadly accepted the RCEP will lead to tariffs being eliminated on 28 per cent of the traded goods to begin with. This will be followed by 35 per cent of all products being eliminated in phases.
• Talks have faltered on providing MFN (most favoured nation) status to all partners. This promises that India will provide investment- or services-related concessions given to a trading partner under a bilateral treaty automatically to RCEP members without any time gap.
• New Delhi may not extend MFN benefits to other RCEP nations on certain items. India has also sought to extend the date for duty cuts from the initially planned 2014 to 2019, because it has raised customs duties on more than 3,500 products since 2014.
• The RCEP is India’s most ambitious trade pact, currently under negotiation. Based on India’s existing free-trade agreement (FTA) with the 10-nation Asean bloc, the RCEP will include all the nations with which Asean has trade deals — New Zealand, Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

Social Issues

High quality fake notes back: NIA

• The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has said “high quality” fake currency notes have “resurfaced”, with Pakistan being the “main source”.
• One of the reasons cited by the Government in 2016, when it scrapped the Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 currency notes, was to wipe out fake currency notes in circulation.
• NIA Inspector General Alok Mittal shared a presentation where he said Pakistan was the main source of printing of high quality fake Indian currency notes (FICN).
• The NIA is the nodal agency for FICN related cases and has so far investigated 48 such cases, of which 13 ended in conviction.
• The high quality notes were being pushed through the “western border and Nepal.” Bangladesh had emerged as the source of low quality FICNs.
• On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the old notes were being scrapped and new notes were being introduced to weed out black money and eventually eradicate corruption.
• Over Rs. 50 crore in fake currency notes have been seized in the past three years, the government had informed the Lok Sabha in June.

Social Issues

Mother tongue for preschool: NCERT

• Children between the ages of three and six years should be taught in their own mother tongues, with a focus on learning through play instead of being subjected to rote learning, tests and examinations, according to the first-ever preschool curriculum released by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
• The draft National Education Policy has recommended that the Right to Education Act be extended to students in the three years of preschool before Class I.
• It also proposed that the NCERT develop a curricular and pedagogical framework for early childhood education.
• The NCERT’s new curriculum is aimed at all pre-school education, defined as the education of 3 to 6-year-olds, whether at anganwadi s, nursery schools, kindergartens, playschools or Montessori schools.
• NCERT Director Hrushikesh Senapaty.

Social Issues

Mother tongue for preschool: NCERT

• Children between the ages of three and six years should be taught in their own mother tongues, with a focus on learning through play instead of being subjected to rote learning, tests and examinations, according to the first-ever preschool curriculum released by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
• The draft National Education Policy has recommended that the Right to Education Act be extended to students in the three years of preschool before Class I.
• It also proposed that the NCERT develop a curricular and pedagogical framework for early childhood education.
• The NCERT’s new curriculum is aimed at all pre-school education, defined as the education of 3 to 6-year-olds, whether at anganwadi s, nursery schools, kindergartens, playschools or Montessori schools.
• NCERT Director Hrushikesh Senapaty.

States

Andhra Pradesh hikes aid for farmers under Rythu Bharosa scheme

A day ahead of the launch of YSR Rythu Bharosa, a financial assistance scheme for farmers, of the Andhra Pradesh government decided to increase the assistance to Rs 13,500 per annum from Rs 12,500 as envisaged earlier.

• The government, following suggestions from farmers’ bodies and NGOs, has agreed to extend the assistance in three instalments.
• Accordingly, Rs 7,500 will be paid in May to meet kharif expenses, Rs 4,000 given in October for rabi operations and the last instalment of Rs 2,000 will be paid during Sankranti to “fill farmers’ homes with happiness.”
• Also, the assistance amounting to Rs 67,500 will be given for five years instead of four years.
• The Central government’s share is Rs 6,000 per annum, which will released under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi programme

Facts of the Day(Important Days)

15 October World Students' Day

World Students' Day is marked as the birthday of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. It is observed on Kalam's birthday, 15 October.

In 2010 the United Nations declared 15 October as "World Students' Day”.

Facts of the Day(Sports)

Sourav Ganguly first cricketer in 65 years to become BCCI president

• Sourav Ganguly is set to become only the second India cricketer after Maharaja of Vizianagaram to serve as the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
• Ganguly will be elected unopposed as the new BCCI president. He filed his nomination on Monday at the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai.