Weekly Current Affairs 1st - 8th April 2022

FINANCE AND BANKING

• RBI imposes penalties on 3 co-operative banks
  • The Reserve Bank of India on Monday imposed penalties totalling Rs 5 lakh on three cooperative banks for various non compliances.
  • Penalty of Rs 2 lakh has been imposed on The Yashwant Cooperative Bank Limited, Phaltan for contravention of non-compliance with directions issued by it on Income Recognition, Asset Classification, Provisioning and Other Related Matters.

• SEBI extends deadline to ban pooling of funds, MF units
  • SEBI has extended the deadline by three months for implementation of the rule to discontinue pooling of funds and/or units in mutual fund transactions by stock brokers/clearing members, and other entities operating online.
  • The ban will come in action on July 1, 2022, considering representations from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) on the same.

• The Kotak Mahindra Bank has been approved to act as a pension payment authorised bank
  • Kotak Mahindra Bank has received approval to function as an authorized bank for payment of pensions.
  • Now retired individuals can open their pension accounts with Kotak Mahindra Bank.
  • Central Pension Accounting Office (CPAO) has conveyed its approval to Kotak Mahindra Bank to start its functions for disbursement of pensions as per the guidelines.

ECONOMY

• Union Government keeps interest rates on Small Savings Schemes unchanged for Q1 (April-June 2022)
  • Ministry of Finance has decided to keep the interest rates unchanged on small savings schemes or post office schemes for the Quarter -1 of FY2022-23 (April-June 2022).
  • The interest rates on the various instruments for April-June 2022 range from 4.0 % to 7.6 %.
  • This is the 8th consecutive quarter when the interest rates on small savings instruments remained unchanged.

• Centre government released 8.83 trillion in devolution to states for FY22
  • Centre government released 8.83 trillion in devolution to states for FY22. It is 19% more than the revised estimate and 33% more than the budget estimate for the year.
  • Along with the taxes due to the states for FY22, the Centre's devolution also includes43,168 crore arrears pending for the period FY97 to FY18.

• Exports stood at USD 35.26 billion in March 2021.
  • The central government will borrow Rs 8.45 trillion from the market through dated securities in the first half of FY23. It is about 59% of the revised full-year target.
  • Finance ministry has now cut the full-year (FY23) gross market borrowing through dated securities from the budgetted level of Rs 14.95 trillion to Rs 14.31 trillion.

NATIONAL

• Govt approves setting up of seven PM MITRA Parks in Greenfield/ Brownfield sites
  • The government has approved setting up of seven PM Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (PM MITRA) Parks in Greenfield and Brownfield sites.
  • It aims at developing world-class infrastructure including plug and play facilities with an outlay of four thousand 445 crore rupees for a period of seven years upto 2027-28.

• Train services between Jayanagar (Bihar) and Kurtha in Nepal
  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Nepalese counterpart Sher Bahadur Deuba,virtually inaugurated the Jaynagar-Kurtha railway service between India and Nepal.
  • The inauguration took place at the Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
  • The service will criss-cross from Jayanagar in Bihar to Kurtha in Janakpur, Nepal.
  • The railway track of the section is 35 kilometres long and it is the first section of the rail line between the two countries.

• SPARSH successfully on-boarded nearly 5 lakh Defence Pensioners onto the platform
  • The System for Pensions Administration – RakSHa (SPARSH) has achieved a major milestone of successfully on-boarding nearly Five Lakh Defence Pensioners onto the platform.
  • In keeping with the Digital India vision of the Government of India, the Ministry of Defence implemented SPARSH for pensioners of the Indian Armed Forces as well as Defence Civilians as an integrated system for automation of sanction and disbursement of defence pension.
  • This web-based system processes pension claims and credits pension directly into the bank accounts of defence pensioners without relying on any external intermediary.

INTERNATIONAL

• Bangladesh: World Bank provides USD 250 million
  • The World Bank approved financing of USD 250 million for Bangladesh to help it strengthen policies to sustain growth following the Covid 19 pandemic and enhance resilience to future shocks.
  • The Bangladesh First Recovery and Resilience Development Policy credit is first in a series of two credits to support fiscal and financial sector policies to enhance macroeconomic stability and sustain growth. It supports expanding and modernising social protection programs and energy sector policies to improve efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These actions will help the country build resilience against future shocks, including climate change.

• Public emergency declared in Sri Lanka
  • Sri Lanka’s president has declared a state of emergency, giving sweeping powers to security forces a day after hundreds tried to storm his house in anger over an unprecedented economic crisis.
  • President Gotabaya Rajapaksa invoked the tough laws allowing the military to arrest and imprison suspects for long periods without trial as demonstrations calling for his resignation spread across the South Asian nation.

• Sri Lanka's central bank governor Ajith Nivard submits resignation
  • Ajith Nivard Cabraal, Sri Lanka's central bank governor, announced his resignation after all of the country's cabinet ministers resigned.
  • A severe shortage of foreign currency has left the government unable to pay for essential imports, including fuel.
  • The island nation of some 22 million people is suffering from its most serious economic crisis since independence from the UK in 1948.

STATES

• Mumbai International Cruise Terminal to be commissioned by July 2024
  • The state-of-the-art Mumbai International Cruise Terminal, coming up at BPX-Indira Dock, is expected to be commissioned by July 2024.
  • The total project cost is Rs 495 crore, out of which, Rs 303 crore will be incurred by Mumbai Port Authority and the remaining by private operators.

• Maharashtra launches scheme to offer personal loans for prisoners
  • Maharashtra government launched a scheme to provide personal loans for prisoners with the aim to improve the living standard of the families of the inmates.
  • The Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank will give loans under the scheme up to Rs 50,000 at an interest rate of 7 per cent.
  • The scheme will be implemented on a pilot basis at Yerawada Central Jail, Pune.

• J&K government to develop five tourist villages within Dal Lake in Srinagar
  • Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta conducted an extensive tour of interiors of Srinagar’s Dal Lake and took stock of various ongoing works for the development of Model In-situ Rehabilitation and Tourist Villages.
  • During the tour, the Chief Secretary stressed upon the officers to prepare a comprehensive plan for holistic development of hamlets in Dal Lake to create tourist villages.

REPORTS AND INDEXES

• Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2022
  • According to Asian Development Bank’s Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2022 the growth in South Asia is projected to slow to 7% in 2022, and up to 7.4% in 2023.
  • Asian Development Bank (ADB) projected India growing by 7.5% in the current fiscal year and up to 8% the next year.
  • ADB said developing Asia's economies are forecast to grow 5.2% this year and 5.3% in 2023, due to a robust recovery in domestic demand and continued expansion in exports.

• Forbes Billionaires 2022: The Richest People In The World
  • SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has toppled Amazon founder Jeff Bezos from the top spot this year.
  • Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani is the 10th richest person in the world, followed by Infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani and his family, which claimed the 11th spot on Forbes' annual world's billionaires list.

• India’s unemployment rate fell to 7.6% in March 2022 - CMIE
  • India’s unemployment rate fell to 7.6% in March, after rising to a six-month high of 8.1% in February, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
  • Rural joblessness rate fell by over 1 percentage point to 7.29% in March, even as the urban rate rose to a three-month high of 8.28%.
  • The unemployment rate stood at 6.57% in January.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

• NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 Mission
  • Axiom Space and SpaceX are adjusting the launch date for the Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) to the International Space Station to allow teams to complete final spacecraft processing ahead of the mission.
  • The Ax-1 crew will fly on Dragon Endeavour to and from the space station. After 10 days in orbit, the Ax-1 crew will splash down off the coast of Florida.

• Indian Scientists discover ghost-like galaxy
  • A team of Indian astronomers have discovered a faint but star-forming galaxy, which had so far remained undetected, hiding in front of a bigger, brighter galaxy. The galaxy with a ghost-like appearance shows hints of stars still forming within it and lies in our cosmic neighbourhood just 136 million light-years away.
  • The galaxy was spotted by a team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, along with international collaborators while studying a known interacting galaxy, NGC6902A.

• Pixxel launches its first satellite aboard SpaceX
  • Indian space-tech startup Pixxel has launched its first satellite, part of its eventual 36-satellite planned constellation, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission.
  • The satellite was incidentally the second that Pixxel built, and is a part of the first three technology demonstration satellites in its constellation. Called ‘Shakuntala’, the satellite will help Pixxel begin its hyperspectral satellite imagery and satellite-based data analytics services to pilot customers.

AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

• Total wheat export stood at 70.30 lakh tonnes till March, 2022
  • Maximum shipments to Bangladesh followed by Sri Lanka and UAE.
  • The total export of wheat in terms of quantity during 2021-22 (till 21st March 2022) was 70.30 LMT.
  • From April 2021 - March 21, 2022, exports of wheat to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and UAE stood at 39,37,438 tonnes; 5,80,819 tonnes; and 4,69,851 tonnes, respectively.
  • India has exported seafood products worth USD 7.16 billion in April-February 2021-22.

• Haryana govt launched crop insurance portal of ‘Mukhya Mantri Bagwani Bima Yojana’
  • Haryana Agriculture Minister J P Dalal launched the portal of Mukhya Mantri Bagwani Bima Yojana with an initial corpus of Rs 10 crore.
  • Under this the farmers will be compensated for the damage caused to their crops due to adverse weather and natural calamities.

DEFENCE

• Indian Coast Guard's Karaikal base gets Interceptor Boat ICGS C-436
  • The Indian Coast Guard unit inducted interceptor boat 'C-436', which has been rebased from Andhra Pradesh station, to its fleet to improve surveillance along the coastline of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
  • The vessel was formally inducted in a ceremony near Karaikal Port, in which Nagapattinam Collector A Arun Thamburaj participated as chief guest.

• ‘Varuna’ Naval Exercise’
  • The 20th edition of the Bilateral Naval Exercise between Indian and French Navies – ‘VARUNA’ was conducted in the Arabian Sea from 30 Mar – 03 Apr 22.
  • The Bilateral Naval Exercises between the two Navies were initiated in 1993. The exercise was christened as ‘VARUNA’ in 2001 and has become a vital part of India – France strategic bilateral relationship.

• Lt Gen Manoj Pande all set to become next Army chief
  • Vice Chief Lieutenant General Manoj Pande is all set to become Chief of the Army Staff.
  • Present Army Chief, Gen MM Naravane is ahead in the race for the post of Chief of Defence Staff after the post fell vacant in December last year as the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat passed away in a helicopter crash near Coimbatore.

EVENTS

• ‘Prakriti’: Environmental Awareness Mascot
  • The Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav launched “Prakriti”, a mascot that spreads greater awareness about small alterations in life that can curb plastic pollution.
  • India is on its way to imposing a blanket ban on single-use plastic. Items such as earbuds, glasses, plastic flags, cutlery, glasses, etc are to be banned from July 2022.

AWARDS AND REWARDS

• Ramdarash Mishra named for Saraswati Samman 2021
  • ‘Mein to Yahan Hun’, a Hindi poetry collection by Prof Ramdarash Mishra, has been selected for ‘Saraswati Samman’, 2021. This book was published in 2015.
  • The ‘Saraswati Samman’ instituted by the KK Birla Foundation in 1991 is recognised as the most prestigious and the highest literary award in the country.
  • It carries an award money of Rs 15 lakh, a citation, and a plaque.

• Journalist Aarefa Johari awarded Chameli Devi Jain Award 2021
  • Mumbai-based journalist Aarefa Johari was declared ,on April 3, as the winner of the Chameli Devi Jain Award for an Outstanding Woman Mediaperson 2021.
  • Instituted in 1982, the annual Chameli Devi Jain Award is a prestigious recognition for women mediapersons in India who have reported on themes such as social development, politics, equity, gender justice, health, war and conflict, and consumer values.

SPORTS

• Indian paddlers Manika Batra, Archana Kamath settle for Bronze medal in Women's Doubles at WTT Star Contender
  • Indian paddler Manika Batra and her partner Archana Kamath settled for a bronze medal at the WTT Star Contender Doha 2022 after losing to Chinese Taipei’s Li Yu-Jhun and Cheng I-Ching in the women’s doubles semi-finals.

• National weightlifting championships: Ann Mariya M T wins gold medal
  • Ann Mariya M.T. from Kerala won the women's 87 kilogram gold medal with a National record aggregate of 231 kg on the concluding day of the National weightlifting championships at the KIIT University campus in Bhubaneswar.

• ICC Women's World Cup
  • Australia defeated England to win their 7th Women's World Cup title in the final of the 2022 edition at the Hagley Oval in Christchurch.
  • Australia won the World Cup without losing a single game, establishing their dominance over the rest of the pack in New Zealand.