Current Affairs Update – 20th April, 2016

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• IFMR Capital has facilitated the
  first ever capital market transaction for MUDRA (Micro Units Development &
  Refinance Agency), which focuses on providing low cost loans to microfinance
  and non-banking financial institutions.
• IFMR Capital has exclusively structured
  and arranged a securitisation transaction Mjolnir IFMR Capital enabling Mudra
  to invest Rs 50 crore in the A (-) rated senior tranche of securitised MSME
  loan portfolio of Janalakshmi Financial Services, the Bangalore-based micro
  finance company.
• This will be a short term
  transaction with tenure of 1.5 years. IFMR Capital also participated as
  investor through their investment in the subordinated j tranche. This marks the
  first of many such capital transactions for MUDRA, which in turn will gain exposure
  to over 100 high quality MFIs and NBFCs in the country that IFMR Capital
  currently works with.
• Small enterprises across the
  country continue to lack access to institutional credit. This is despite nearly
  80% of the total estimated demand of Rs 32,50,000 crore originating from the
  informal sector, said IFMR.

• The Union Cabinet, headed by
  Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday approved the expansion of the
  Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) with Chile, a move that will help in
  doubling of exports to the Latin American nation in the future.
• As per the expanded PTA, Chile
  has offered concessions to India on 1,798 tariff lines with margin of
  preference (MoP) ranging from 30-100%. India has reciprocated on 1,031 tariff
  lines with MoP at 10-100%.
• A PTA between India and Chile was
  signed in March 2006 and came into effect from August 2007. In 2006-07, Chile
  was ranked 51st export destination for India. With bilateral trade at $2.3
  billion.

• PTC India Financial Services said
  on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with US Energy Association to
  conduct training programmes for hydropower projects under United States Agency
  for International Development (USAID)’s South Asia Regional Programme for
  Energy Integration.
• As per the agreement, PFS and US
  Energy Association will jointly conduct capacity building training programmes
  for senior executives from the SAARC nations on techno-economic appraisal and financial
  analysis of hydropower projects.

• JK Tyre and Industries Ltd on 18
  April 2016 announced that it had completed the acquisition of tyre, tube and
  flap maker Cavendish Industries, a unit of Kesoram Industries Ltd, for 2195
  crore rupees. Kesoram Industries is a B.K. Birla Group company.
• JK Tyre will fund the deal
  through a mix of internal accruals and debt raised by JK Group associates, such
  as Bengal & Assam Co. Ltd (the holding company) and Valiant Pacific LLC, a
  trading firm.
• JK Tyre will hold a 64 per cent
  stake in Cavendish, while the rest will be held by Bengal & Assam and
  Valiant.

• India will sign the Paris
  Agreement on climate change, adopted by more than 190 countries in December
  last, on Friday in New York.
• The Union Cabinet Wednesday
  aopproved the signing of the agreement, adopted during the 21st Conference of
  Parties held in the French capital.
• Environment Minister Prakash
  Javadekar will sign the agreement on behalf of India on April 22 at a
  high-level signature ceremony convened by the Secretary-General of the United
  Nations Ban Ki-moon.
• India had advocated a strong and
  durable climate agreement based on the principles and provisions of the United
  Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the agreement addresses
  all the important “concerns and expectations” of India.

• The government today approved
  signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Bhutan on technical cooperation
  in the field of capacity building, benchmarking and bilateral exchange in
  infrastructure engineering.
• The MoU aims at taking forward
  India-Bhutan friendship treaty and provide an umbrella for educational,
  scientific and technical research and environment protection.
• Through this Memorandum of
  Understanding (MoU), the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), a construction
  major under the Urban Development Ministry, will gain experience in
  construction of roads on hills which will be helpful in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal
  Pradesh, Uttarakhand and various States of North-East Region.
• The CPWD also expects to garner
  some road construction projects in Bhutan, the release said.

• Panasonic India and AES India
  Private Limited on 18 April 2016 announced an agreement to construct a 10 MW
  energy storage array at Panasonic’s Technopark manufacturing facility in
  Jhajjar, Haryana.
• This joint project is the first
  large-scale battery-based energy storage project in India.

• The storage will provide daily
  reliability and back-up to the manufacturing facility, while demonstrating grid
  stability and renewable integration services in the region.
• The project combines Panasonic’s
  capabilities as India’s leading lithium-ion battery supplier with AES Energy
  Storage’s Advancion® platform.
• While AES operates 116 MW of
  energy storage projects around the globe, this project signifies AES’ entry
  into the commercial and industrial energy storage market.

• The Haryana Government on 1 April
  2016 notified its Affordable Plotted Housing Policy 2016 for low and medium
  potential towns also known as Deen Dayal Jan Awas Yojna.
• The policy is intended to
  encourage the development of high density plotted colonies in Low and Medium
  Potential towns of the State wherein small plots are made available through a
  liberal policy framework.

• This policy will enable the
  creation of additional affordable housing stock in the low and medium potential
  towns of the state.
• All projects are being required
  to be completed within seven years from the date of granting the license.
• Not more than 30 per cent of the
  net planned area under residential zone, inclusive of 20 per cent area limit
  for group housing projects, can be allowed for projects under this policy.

• Union Government on 19 April 2016
  extended the Beti Bachao Beti Padho (BBBP) Scheme in additional 61 districts
  across 11 States and Union Territories. The scheme was extended in the
  districts with low Child Sex Ratio.
• Women and Child Development
  Minister Maneka Gandhi who extended the scheme into 61 more districts informed
  that out of hundred, 49 districts are doing extremely well. She said, the child
  sex ratio of the other districts remain stable.
• Apart from this, she said that
  for the monitoring of pregnancy, Sarpanch of the village should be made nodal
  person and district collector have been asked to show the data of number of
  boys and girls in every village through a board.
• Superintendent of police in every
  district will nominate one woman Police Volunteer to monitor security situation
  of women.

• Indian researcher and professor,
  Kadambot Siddique, was named Ambassador for the International Year of Pulses in
  the Asia-Pacific region at a ceremony in Marrakesh on Tuesday.
• Siddique is a leading scientist
  in the field of legumes and currently serves as a professor of agriculture and
  chair and director of the Institute of Agriculture at the University of Western
  Australia.
• As Ambassador for the
  International Year, Siddique will work to raise awareness on the important
  contribution of pulses to food security and their positive impact on health and
  the environment, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a
  statement.
• Besides encouraging new
  connections throughout the food chain to better use pulse-based proteins in our
  food and address trade challenges, Siddique is also tasked with seeking out
  opportunities for dialogue on these nutritional legumes and efforts to ensure
  more people have access to information on pulses.

• Rahul Johri, who recently stepped
  down from his post as Discovery Networks Asia Pacific’s executive
  vice-president and general manager for South Asia has joined the Board of
  Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as chief executive officer (CEO). His stint
  will start from June 1 and he will report to BCCI Secretary Anurag Thakur.
• This marks a first for the BCCI,
  which until now did not have the post of a CEO.
• Johri had been with Discovery for
  15 years before stepping down earlier this year. During his time, he oversaw
  the growth of the network in India to an eleven channel bouquet. For the past
  eight years, he led the South Asia operations of the network.

• US President Barack Obama on 19
  April 2016 nominated Indian-American Geeta Pasi as the country’s next envoy to
  Chad, a landlocked country in northern Central Africa.
• At present, Pasi is the Director
  of the Office of Career Development and Assignments in the Bureau of Human
  Resources at the Department of State.
• Pasi, who served as the United
  States Ambassador to Djibouti from 2011 to 2014, is a career member of the
  Foreign Service. Earlier, she has been the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US
  Embassy in Dhaka, from 2006 to 2009, and Deputy Principal Officer at the US
  Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany from 2003 to 2006.

• The President of India, Pranab
  Mukherjee on 19 April 2016 presented the Hindi Sevi Samman Awards for the years
  2012, 2013 and 2014. The awards were presented at a function at Rashtrapati
  Bhavan.
• The Hindi Sevi Samman Awards were
  instituted by Central Hindi Institute, Agra in 1989.  Fourteen scholars receive this award in seven
  different categories every year for their contribution in the field of Hindi
  language and literature.

• M. Venkateshwar
• V.D. Hegde
• Deven Chand Das ‘Sudama’
• Beena Budki

• Devendra Kumar
• Shatrughan Prasad

• Suresh Kumar Jindal
• Suresh Tiwari

• Sneh Thakur

• President Pranab Mukherjee on 19
  April 2016 honoured the Chinese professor Ge Fuping with the George Grierson
  prize for his remarkable works done for the propagation of Hindi abroad.
• Ge has made commendable efforts
  for the promotion of Hindi language abroad. Besides him, Alka Dunputh (from
  Mauritius) and Shichiro Soma (from Japan) were also given the George Grierson
  award by the President.
• These awards were instituted by
  Central Hindi Institute, Agra in 1989. 14 scholars receive this award in seven
  different categories every year for their contribution in the field of Hindi
  language and literature.

• India’s Durga Thakur was on 19
  April 2016 promoted as International Outdoor Umpire by the International Hockey
  Federation (FIH). The decision was taken after watching her performance at the
  Hawkes Bay Cup that was held in April 2016 in Hastings, New Zealand.
• With this, Thakur became an
  addition to a crop of young Indian umpires currently officiating at the
  international level. FIH’s list currently has 14 Indians in the elite league of
  international umpires (10 men, 4 women).

• England’s snooker great Steve
  Davis announced his retirement from the game on 17 April 2016 after 38-year
  career. He is 58.
• His last match came on 10 April
  2016 where he lost against Fergal O’Brien and failed to qualify for 2016 World
  Championship.
• Starting his snooker career in
  1978, he went on to win six world titles in 1980s and was world number one from
  1983 to 1990. In fact, he was World number one for seven consecutive seasons.

• The International Cricket Council
  (ICC) and Emirates Airline on 19 April 2016 renewed their deal for an
  additional seven years. With this, Emirates Airlines became the Global Partner
  for all ICC events from 2016-2023.
• The ICC and the Emirates
  relationship date back to 2002, when the award-winning airline came on board as
  a sponsor of the ICC. The partnership was strengthened with Emirates becoming
  the ICC’s official partner for the 2007-2015 events cycle.

• Iran on 17 April 2016 unveiled
  S-300 missile system parts at army parade in Tehran. It was a long-awaited air
  defence system ordered from Russia.
• The S-300 system was on order
  since 2007 but Russia postponed the sale three years later after the UN
  Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution relating to Iran’s nuclear
  programme.
• A deal between Iran and six world
  powers over its nuclear activities which led to lifting of sanctions in January
  2016 removed the barriers to delivery but the fully operational system is still
  awaited.

• The making of India: The untold
  story of British Enterprises authored by Kartar Lalvani was in news in the third
  week of April 2016. The book discusses the British rule and its role in
  creating a unified India.
• The book supposedly brings out
  the many positive aspects of the colonial rule that remained hitherto untold.
• The story of the book open in the
  17th century when a small seafaring island despatched sailing ships over 11000
  miles on a five-month trading journey in search of new opportunities.

• The World Bank Group on 11 April
  2016 released the 2016 edition of the World Development Indicators (WDI). WDI
  is the most widely used dataset and provides high-quality cross-country
  comparable statistics about development and people’s lives around the globe.
• WDI now includes 1400 indicators
  for over 200 economies.

• The 2016 edition includes
  indicators to help measure the 169 targets of the 17 Sustainable Development
  Goals (SDGs). The SDGs build on the 8 goals and 18 targets of the Millennium
  Development Goals (MDGs) that were focused in the previous editions.

• WDI 2016 now includes the
  estimates of global and national extreme poverty rates at the international
  poverty line of 1.90 US dollars/day per person. These show that 13 percent of
  the global population lived in extreme poverty in 2012, down from 37 percent in
  1990.

Regards

Team ExamPundit

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