Current Affairs - 2nd April 2014

New PM of France

France’s President Francis Hollande has named Manual Valls as the new Prime Minister of the country. He is a famous socialist leader of the nation. This decision was taken after the ruling party suffered a huge setback in the municipal elections in March.

India’s growth projection by ADB

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has lowered the growth projection of India from 5.7% to 5.5% for the fiscal year 2014-15. This was shown in its index released recently.

World chess rankings

As per the latest world chess rankings, in the men category Magnus Carlsen of Norway remains at no.1 spot whereas Armeni’s Levon Aronian is at no.2. Indian chess sensation Vishwanathan Anand grabs world No.3 ranking. Indian chess player P.Harikrishna is at No.25. in the women’s category, Hungarian Judit Polgar is at No.14 and Chinese Hou Yifan is at no.2. Indian player K. Humpy is at No. 3.

ITI signs MoU with DoT

Public sector ITI ltd. has signed a MoU with department of telecommunications for the year 2014-15. The MoU highlights the role of ITI in telecommunications sector and also allows it to play an important role in the Government of India funded projects of national importance like National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN) and Network for Spectrum (NFS).

Next president of Slovakia

Andrej Kiska is set to become the new President of Slovakia and will take over from the current PM Robert Fico.

RBI monetary policy, 2014

In the first bi-monthly policy review of 2014-15, the Reserve bank of India didn’t change the key rates of the monetary policy. The major points of the policy are mentioned as follows:-

• REPO rate unchanged at 8%. So, automatically, reverse REPO rate is at 7%.

• CRR unchanged at 4%.

• Economic growth projection for the year 2014-15 is 5.5%.

• CAD expected to be 2% of GDP in 2014-15.

• Next review on June 3.

• Consumer Price Index (combined) will be new measure for inflation.