General Awareness

BUSINESS AND ECONOMY - October 2018

Oct 2018

May 15, 2019

India Finds OECD Index Faulty

India has found problems with the current method under which the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks countries based on their services trade policies, indicating the outcomes are biased and counter-intuitive.
Launched in 2014, the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI), computed by the OECD, is now available for 2018 for a total of 45 economies (36 OECD and the rest non-OECD) and 22 sectors.
A study commissioned by the Commerce Ministry found, that the OECD index has a large number of problems associated with it, including some significant design issues that render it impractical for use.

StanChart Slams Essar Steel's CoC

Standard Chartered Bank slammed Essar Steel's committee of creditors (CoC) for holding secret negotiations with ArcelorMittal, resulting in illegality that reduced the bid amount and jeopardised its interest.

Pepsi and Coke May Go Off Shelves

Leaders of a trade body in Tamil Nadu announced that the ban on sale of Pepsi and Coca-Cola in Tamil Nadu would be effective from August 15.
This is not the first time such an announcement has been made.
Earlier, in March 2017, a faction of traders made a decision not to sell Coca-Cola and Pepsi and took them off the shelves.
The traders had then cited two reasons for taking this decision, health issues and the fact that multinational firms exploit groundwater resources.
But within six to seven months, they started stocking these two brands again.

NMDC to Invest in Infrastructure

National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is investing about $1 billion in infrastructure in the next three years to help ramp up iron ore production.
Amitava Mukherjee, director (finance), said that the cost of the upcoming three-million tonne capacity steel plant would go up to Rs. 19,000 crore against the estimated over Rs. 15,500 crore.

Bad Loan Divergence in Union Bank

Public sector lender Union Bank of India reported a Rs. 3,370-crore loss in the January-March period of 2018-19 even as the Reserve Bank of India's annual inspection found the lender had under-provided, also known as 'divergence' in banking parlance, in 2017-18.
The divergence is also because of its exposure to troubled infrastructure conglomerate, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services, which turned bad.
Following the RBI inspection report, the bank had to make additional provisioning of Rs. 2,281 crore in Q4. For IL&FS, a Rs. 880 crore provision was made.
While the lender had reported a Rs. 2,583 crore-lossin 2018, it had recorded profits in the first three quarters of 2018-19.

May 14, 2019

Hindustan Times the Most Read Paper

Hindustan Times has consolidated its position as the most read newspaper across India's two top markets, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai combined, reaffirming the formidable trust of readers in the brand.
The newspaper has a combined daily readership of 2.72 million in the two cities.
Published by HT Media Ltd, HT has grown readership in all major markets while retaining its spot as the second most read English newspaper in the country, with 3.39 million readers.
It continues to be the undisputed No. 1 newspaper for the 16th time in a row in Delhi and the National Capital Region with 1.84 million readers against The Times of India's 1.34 million.
It also has 885,000 readers in Mumbai as compared to the latter's 1.28 million readers.

Pure Nutrition to Expand Offline Stores

Pure Nutrition, an online nutraceutical company, has announced offline store expansion plans to augment its retail presence in the country.
The company, which operates in five different verticals viz. dietary supplements, super foods, protein powder, pure herbal infusions and cold pressed oils, has already opened a few stores at airports for better visibility of its products and is now planning to put up stores in key cities.

Nabventures Launches Maiden Fund

Nabventures, a subsidiary of NABARD, announced its maiden fund to back agriculture, food and rural start-ups.
Nabventures Fund has a proposed corpus of Rs. 500 crore with a greenshoe option of Rs. 200 crore.
It has received an anchor commitment from NABARD. The fund plans to raise the resources from domestic and global investors.

China Hits Back

China said that it will raise tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. goods from June 1, in retaliation to the latest round of U.S. tariff hikes and Washington's plans to target almost all Chinese imports.
The announcement came after the latest round of U.S.-China trade negotiations ended without a deal, and after Washington increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
U.S. President Donald Trump had also ordered the start of a process to impose new duties on another $300 billion worth of Chinese items.
Despite the retaliation, Beijing appeared to give time to find a resolution by setting the June 1 date.

Exporters to Get Auto GST Refunds

Exporters of goods and services as well as suppliers to SEZ units are likely to get GST refunds automatically from June as the revenue department plans to introduce faceless scrutiny of refunds and faster claim settlement.
Currently, manufacturing exporters and suppliers to SEZs, who want to claim ITC (input tax credit) refund, have to file an application on the common portal and thereafter, manually submit a print out to the jurisdictional officer.
Once implemented, the time period for such refunds will come down to about a fortnight from months at present.

May 13, 2019

IMF to Loan Pakistan

After signing an agreement, Pakistan's adviser on finance said that Pakistan will get $6 billion from the IMF over the next three years to meet its foreign debt obligations.
The deal comes after months of negotiations over what will be Pakistan's 22nd bailout aimed at staving off a potential balance-of-payments crisis.
Pakistan will get $6 billion from the IMF, and in addition, will get $2 to $3 billion from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank in the next three years.

IT Sector on Recovery Path

According to international IT experts, after some years of dry drive, Indian tech firms now seem to have turned the corner and established themselves firmly as digital transformation agents in the global market.

May 12, 2019

SRF to Sell Engineering Plastics Unit

Chemicals firm SRF Ltd. will sell its engineering plastics business to DSM for Rs. 320 crore, as part of a strategy to focus on core operations.
The Gurugram-based SRF is engaged in the manufacturing of industrial and specialty intermediates.
The company has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its engineering plastics business to DSM, a life sciences and materials sciences company.
SRF's engineering plastics business manufactures multiple grades of engineering plastic compounds.

Facebook Sues S. Korean Firm

Facebook is suing South Korean data analytics firm Rankwave to make sure it isn't breaking the leading social network's rules.
A lawsuit was filed against Rankwave in a California State court in Silicon Valley to enforce terms the company agreed to in order to operate apps on the social network.
Facebook suspended apps and accounts associated with Rankwave, and asked the court to order Rankwave to abide by its rules for applications.

May 11, 2019

Trump Raises Tariffs on Chinese Goods

The trade war between the U.S. and China took a turn for the worse as the Trump administration increased tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods.
Tariffs on 5,700 categories of goods increased from 10% to 25%.
The tariffs went into effect just hours before U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He held a second day of talks in Washington.

RBI Withdraws Circular

Following an NCLAT order, the Reserve Bank of India withdrew its circular asking banks and financial institutions to declare details of their exposure and provisions related to the crisis-hit IL&FS.
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) had allowed banks to declare their defaulting accounts of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL&FS) and its group companies as non-performing assets.
The circular had asked banks and financial institutions to disclose their exposure to IL&FS and its group entities as the NCLAT verdict was pending.

Two Bids for Jet Airways

State Bank of India received two unsolicited bids for ailing Jet Airways, nearly a month after the airline was forced to ground all operations due to funding troubles.
Jet, once India's largest private airline, stopped all flights on April 17 after its lenders, led by SBI, declined to extend more funds to keep the carrier going.

IIP At 21-month Low

According to latest data, growth in industrial activity dipped to a 21-month low in March, contracting 0.1% due in large part to a continuing slowdown in the manufacturing sector.
The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) contracted in March for the first time since June 2013.
To further put this contraction in perspective, the IIP grew a robust 5.33% in the March, 2018, and 4.39% in March 2017.
Within this, the manufacturing sector contracted by 0.43% in March, the second consecutive month of contraction (it contracted 0.39% in February) and the third consecutive month of slowing growth.

India Adds 40 million New Internet Users

According to the latest report by Google, India is adding 40 million new Internet users on an average every year, among the fastest in the world, led by the rise of the non-English speaking Internet user.
The online space in India has never been this vibrant. Indian internet users are fast adopting (Google's) search tool and finding comfort in regional languages.
With growing connectivity, the rise in searches from non-metro cities across categories is faster than that of the metros.
This is due to the rise of the non-English speaking internet user. Google's latest report said that nine out of 10 new internet users in India are likely to be Indian language users.

L&T Acquires Additional Stake in Mindtree

Infrastructure major Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has acquired another 2 per cent stake in Mindtree by purchasing shares from the open market, taking its overall holding in the mid-sized IT company to 25.93 per cent.
The shares were purchased at Rs 980 apiece.

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