Indian Economy - Current Affairs for June, 2015

The Centre desires to add 2000 Kilometres National Highway in the State.

The literacy rate in the rural areas was pegged at 71% last year, compared to 86% in the urban areas. It said that among the age group of seven year and above, the male literacy rate was registered at 83 percent vis-a-vis the female literacy rate of 67 percent. According to the survey, in the rural areas nearly 4.5 percent of males and 2.2 percent of females completed education level of graduation and above, while in urban areas 17 percent of males and 13 percent of females completed this level of education.

United Bank of India's 21.5 percent assets are either bad or have been restructured to save them from turning non-performing assets (NPAs). The other banks that have significant amount of gross NPAs and restructured loans include, Central Bank of India (21.30 percent), Indian Overseas Bank (19.40 percent), Punjab & Sind Bank (18.74 percent) and Punjab National Bank (17.94 per cent), as of March 2015.

The project will help home loan applicants to get the loan within 10 days after receipt of application form and relevant supporting documents.

The World Bank data disclosed that the size of Indian economy stood at $2.06 trillion at the end of 2014. It has almost doubled in size since the financial crisis hit the country in 2008, and has more than quadrupled from the start of this millennium.

Earlier, AD Cat-I Banks were allowed to borrow from IFIs/MFIs for a short period in 2013 with prior permission from the RBI on a case-by-case basis. Now as per the recent notification, the banks can borrow without any such prior approvals from the RBI.

AIIB will have authorised capital of 100 billion US Dollars, and Asian countries will contribute up to 75 per cent of the total capital. Each member will be allocated a share of the quota based on their Economic size and not contribution to the Bank's authorised capital. AIIB is expected to go into operation later this year.

The facility will enable traders, especially small investors, to invest even for a single night in liquid funds. A similar product was introduced last month by Bombay Stock Exchange, BSE. The exchange has seen daily transactions worth 400-500 crore rupees in the product so far.

The PIL, which has sought quashing of UPSC's notice for Civil Services preliminary examination to the extent of the gender or sex eligibility criteria, has now been listed for hearing on July 27. The petition has contended that lack of the third gender option has resulted in transgender not being able to apply for examination which is scheduled to be held on August 23.

The Cabinet gave its approval on 17th June’15 for stepping up India’s solar power capacity target under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission by five times, reaching 1,00,000 Mega Watt by 2022. The target will principally comprise of 40,000 mega watt Rooftop and 60,000 mega watt through Large and Medium Scale Grid Connected Solar Power Projects. With this ambitious target, India will become one of the largest Green Energy producers in the world, surpassing several developed countries.

The commission, co-chaired by Mr Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and Mr Jerzy Pietreiwicz, Secretary of State, Ministry of Economy, drew a blueprint for stepping up investments and identified a series of actions to raise trade from the 2014 level of USD 2.3 billion, to USD 5 billion by the year 2018.

The 'streetlight tax' will become part of the property tax notice served on AP residents. Orders to this effect will be issued in a couple of days and collection of the tax as part of property tax will start from July 2015.

The aim of the Exercise is to build and promote positive military relations between Indian and UK Army and to enhance their ability to undertake joint tactical level operations in Counter Insurgency/Counter Terrorism Environment under United Nations Charter.

It was reported that the public-sector banks continue to report higher bad loans and the gross non-performing assets as on 31st Mar’15 stood at 5.17%.

On 15 June 2015 the Supreme Court said in its order “The examination stands vitiated even if one student is being benefited illegally” and it ordered CBSE to re-conduct the AIPMT 2015 again.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on 17 June 2015 approved inclusion of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh in the list of States to be covered under the National Dairy Plan- I (NDP-I).

Union Minister for Shipping Nitin Gadkari and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis unveiled a comprehensive port development plan for Maharashtra. An MoU for the port project in Dahanu, to be built by the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and the Maharashtra Maritime Board, was also signed.

Mutual Funds attracted nearly 4,200 Crore rupees in May, taking the total net inflow close to 57,000 crore in the past one year, primarily on account of positive returns from equities. This also marks the 13th consecutive month of net inflows by mutual fund houses into the stock markets. According to data released by capital market regulator Sebi, the money in equities started coming in from the second half of May 2014, after the announcement of General Election's verdict and the momentum has continued till date.

NRIs can subscribe to chit funds through banking channels, including accounts maintained in India. The state governments or Registrar of Chits may permit chit funds to accept subscription from NRIs on non-repatriation basis.

A key measurement of a country's trade, the CAD is the amount by which the value of goods and services imported by it exceeds the value of goods and services exported in a period. In a statement, RBI said that the deficit shrank to 1.3 billion US dollar or 0.2% of GDP in the quarter. This is lower than the deficit of 8.3 billion dollar, or 1.6 percent of GDP, in the previous quarter. The bank said the reduction in CAD was primarily on account of lower trade deficit as net earnings through services and primary income witnessed a decline on a quarter-over-quarter term.

The exemption would apply to certain first-line and second-line antiretroviral drugs (ARV) used to treat adults and children, as well as to certain diagnostic kits and equipment that are used by National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to fight the HIV/AIDS under the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP).

Government has allowed investing 5 per cent of EPFO corpus in stock markets.

World Bank has approved 250 million US dollars loan for Jhelum and Tawi Flood Recovery Project for reconstruction of flood-affected public infrastructure in Jammu and Kashmir. The project will be funded by credit from World Bank's concessionary - International Development Association. A continuous spell of rains in September last year had caused Jhelum, Chenab and Tawi rivers, their tributaries and many other streams to flow above the danger mark which had severely affected livelihoods in the state.

India achieved lowest ever power deficit of 3.6 per cent and highest ever increase in power capacity addition of 22,566 Mega Watts.

The RBI lowered its growth forecast from 7.8 per cent, to 7.6 per cent for the current fiscal.

But announcing its bi-monthly monetary policy, the RBI left all other policy tools, like the Cash Reserve Ratio and the Statutory Liquidity Ratio unchanged. Following RBI’s instructions to pass on the sequence of rate cuts into lending rates, the State Bank of India has reduced its base rate by 15 basis points to 9.70 per cent from 9.85 per cent effective 8th June. This comes after the Reserve Bank announced a repo rate cut of 25 bps earlier today. While the Reserve Bank has cut its lending rates by 75 basis points in three installments, the SBI has done so by 30 bps in two tranches.

Shrinking for the second straight month, output of the country's eight core sector industries contracted by 0.4 per cent in April 2015, on poor performance of most sectors. Core sector output had declined by 0.1 per cent in March this year, and had grown 5.7 per cent in April last year.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said that the previous UPA government's deal for 126 Rafales was too expensive and it would have hampered other modernisation plans of the Indian military. Parrikar termed the deal "economically unviable". He added, the deal would have required around Rs 1.3 lakh crore over a period of 10-11 years.

In the new forms, the government has dropped the controversial provision for mandatory disclosure of foreign trips and dormant bank accounts. The Finance Ministry in a statement said, the forms - ITR 2 and ITR 2A - will have only three pages and other details will have to be filled in schedules. At present individuals having income from capital gains are required to file Form ITR-2 but it was noticed that majority of individuals who file it do not have capital gains.