Current Affairs Update – 9th July, 2015

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the Important Current Affairs of 9th July, 2015. These are Important for the upcoming SBI PO Mains 2015 and RBI Assistant 2015 Exams.

• To check offshore tax evasion, India and the US today signed an agreement to implement FATCA that will facilitate exchange of information between the two countries from October 1.
• The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was signed here by Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das and US Ambassador Richard Verma.
• US law FATCA seeks to facilitate flow of financial information between countries. Under the inter-governmental agreement, Indian financial institutions would have to reveal information about US tax payers to the revenue department which would be passed on to the US tax authorities.
• Under the pact, US will also share with India financial information.
• The current reporting period beginning October 1 would be for July-December 2014.
• If a financial institution does not comply to FATCA, it will have to pay 30 per cent penalty tax on all its US revenues, including dividend, interest, fees and sales.
• FATCA will help India deal with the black money menace. The country has stepped up efforts to tackle it. Under the multilateral agreement India will start receiving information from other countries under automatic exchange of information (AEOI) route from 2017 onwards.

• The World Bank on 7 July 2015 released the State of Safety
  Nets 2015 report.  It aggregated spending
  on social safety net programs and beneficiaries in 157 countries, economies and
  territories and presented a comparative analysis of those programmes.
• As per the report, only 1/3rd of the world’s poor are
  covered by safety nets program with largest gaps in Sub-saharan Africa and
  South Asia.

• Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) is the largest in Conditional
  Cash Transfers (CCT) category with 78 million beneficiaries.
• Mid Day Meal programme is the largest in the School feeding
  category with 105 million beneficiaries.
• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
  (MGNREGs) is the largest in the Public Works Programme (PWP) category with 182
  million beneficiaries.
• Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS) is
  the second largest in the Unconditional Cash Transfers (UCT) category with 21
  million beneficiaries.
• Spending on public distribution system (PDS) accounts for
  0.6 percent of GDP.
• Total spending on social safety nets is 0.72 of GDP with
  0.09 percent of GDP in Unconditional Cash Transfer schemes, 0.11 percent in
  school feeding, 0.29 in public works and 0.23 percent in fee waivers.

• More than 1.9 billion people in 136 low- and middle-income
  countries benefit from social safety net programs.
• The combined spending on social safety nets amounted to
  about 329 US billion dollars between 2010 and 2014.
• Some 718 million people are enrolled in cash transfer
  programs, including public works, and constitute 36 percent of social safety
  net globally.
• Cash transfers constitute the highest share of spending in
  all regions except in Sub-Saharan Africa, where food and other in-kind
  transfers dominate.

• India will be the world’s fastest growing economy, for the
  second consecutive year in 2016 at 7.5 per cent, International Monetary Fund
  said, even as it lowered its current year global economy growth forecast to 3.3
  per cent.
• In its World Economic Outlook Update released, IMF retained
  India’s growth projection for current year at 7.5 per cent, which will be
  higher than China’s 6.8 per cent. It forecast a growth rate of 7.5 per cent for
  India in 2016 as well, as against China’s 6.3 per cent.
• China was the fastest growing economy in 2014, at 7.4 per
  cent as against India’s 7.3 per cent, as per the IMF data.
• IMF’s growth projection for India, however, is lower than
  the estimates of the Indian Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India. The
  Finance Ministry expects GDP growth to be 8-8.5 per cent in 2015-16, while the
  Reserve Bank of India estimated it at 7.6 per cent.
• For India, IMF follows data for fiscal year ending March,
  while for other countries it considers the December-ending periods.
• In case of both India and China, IMF retained the projection
  made earlier in April, while it had lowered global growth forecast from 3.5 per
  cent to 3.3 per cent for 2015.
• The global growth projection for 2016 has been retained at
  3.8 per cent.

• Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) on 8 July 2015 signed
  framework agreements for equity investments in infrastructure projects in BRICS
  countries. The agreement was signed at the BRICS summit in Ufa.

1. India’s IDFC (Infrastructure Development Finance Company)
   group
2. Brazil’s BTG Pactual
3. China’s Silk Road Fund
4. The Development Bank of Southern Africa

• Wipro Digital, the digital business unit of India’s third
  largest IT services provider Wipro on Thursday announced its intention to
  acquire Denmark-based design firm Designit.
• The company specialises in designing transformative
  products-service experience, Wipro said in a regulatory filing to the BSE.
  According to the company statement, the purchase consideration is of €85
  million (about Rs 590 crore) which includes a performance based contingent consideration
  payable over three years.
• The acquisition is subject to customary conditions and
  regulatory approvals and is expected to be closed in the current quarter, added
  Wipro. Final Payout could range between 70 -105 per cent of purchase
  consideration.
• Designit’s expertise in experience-driven design complements
  Wipro Digital’s capabilities in technology, digital strategy, design, and
  digital architecture, the company said.
• Founded in 1991, Designit employs more than 300 people in
  its nine offices globally, it delivers transformative product-service
  experiences for various sectors like healthcare, telecom, banking, automotive,
  and retail. In calendar year 2014, the company had a revenue of € 27 million.

• Practo, that provides an app and web service for scheduling
  appointments with doctors has acquired Genii, a technology services start-up
  focused on product design and development.
• The founders of the Mumbai-based firm Varun Vohra and Aditya
  Anand and their 11 member team will move to Bengaluru to join Practo.
• An alumni of Birla Institute of Technology and Science,
  Pilani Dubai, Vohra and Anand will lead product teams at Practo. They will help
  Practo tap the enterprise space with products focused around hospitals and
  diagnostic centers. Practo which already lists over 8,000 hospitals on its
  platform aims to reach to 20,000 hospitals by the end of this year.
• Genii is the second acquisition for Practo which raised $30
  million (Rs. 190 crore) in February from venture capital firms Sequoia Capital
  and Matrix Partners. In April it acquired Delhi-based fitness tech start-up
  FitHo for an undisclosed amount.

• Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft will buy 49 percent stake
  in Essar Oil for about $3.2 billion after excluding the Mumbai-based firm’s
  flourishing coal-bed methane (CBM) business.
• Rosneft, the world’s top listed oil producer, will get a
  hold in India’s second biggest oil refinery as well as its 1,600 petrol pumps
  that will more than triple to 5,000 in two years.
• The Russian firm will also supply 10 million tonnes a year
  of crude to Essar Oil’s 20 million tonnes per annum Vadinar refinery in Gujarat
  for 10 years.
• The proposed transaction is conditional upon various factors
  such as due diligence, determination of the transaction price, execution of
  definitive transaction documents and receipt of requisite approvals, it said
  without disclosing the deal size.
• Sources privy to the development said Rosneft will pay $3.2
  billion for the 49 percent stake.

• eMudhra Limited, a leading certifying firm in the country
  for digital signatures, today launched eSign services.
• eSign is an online electronic signature service which can
  facilitate an Aadhaar holder to digitally sign a document within seconds. The
  signatures generated by eSign are legally valid and secure under the
  Information Technology Act, 2000, the company said.
• As part of the Digital India Vision, Prime Minister launched
  eSign services in the country on July 1.
• eSign can “revolutionise” the way business and
  governance is conducted in the country and pave the way for a digital
  transformation into a paperless environment, eMudhra said in a statement.
• The firm which claims to be the first to start eSign
  services has also launched eMlocker – eMudhra’s Digital Locker.
• By using eMlocker along with eSign, one can store documents
  such as PAN cards, Aadhaar cards, electricity bills or any other documents
  electronically. One can also sign and attest them using eSign and send to
  anybody, it said.

• Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan Tata today pledged support to community development work in Tripura as Tata Trusts joined hands with the state government.
• Speaking at the MoU signing between Tripura government and Tata Trusts for community development in the state, Tata said: “Our aim is to encourage prosperity, not by being exploitive, not by taking natural resource or assets from here and developing them outside, but by creating livelihoods for the people that we work with.”
• A steering committee will be the guiding force for implementation of this joint programme and would comprise of representatives from the Government of Tripura and Tata Trusts.

• An Electronic Nose (E-Nose) was jointly developed by
  Nagpur-based National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) of
  CSIR and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). The development
  was announced by CSIR-NEERI and C-DAC on 8 July 2015.
• E-Nose technology will help monitor the surrounding
  environment to sniff out dangerous gases.

• It is a portable device and measures odour concentration as
  well as odour intensity.
• It uses an array of sensors that function on the principle
  similar to that of human olfaction (sense of smell). The sensor array generates
  a pattern based on the type of aroma.

• Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on 8 July 2015 launched
  a mobile ticketing app for unreserved tickets that will cover 35 stations
  between the 123 km long Churchgate-Dhauroad suburban section in Western
  Railway.
• The ministry also launched two other IT-based initiaves
  including a SMS destination alert service for premier trains and an e-ticketing
  portal in Hindi.

• The mobile ticketing application for unreserved tickets aims
  to facilitate a hassle free travel for lakhs of daily passengers in Mumbai.
• Developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems, the
  paperless unreserved ticketing feature in mobile application aims to eliminate
  the need for printing of unreserved tickets.

• Indian Army on 8 July 2015 dedicated the monument named
  Prerna Sthal at Hussainiwala to the nation. The commemorative monument was
  built to honour the sacrifice of soldiers of India.
• The newly constructed Prerna Sthal is located at the gateway
  of the memorial to Shaheed Bhagat Singh at Hussainiwala, a village in Firozpur
  district of Punjab, India, where Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were
  cremated on 23 March 1931.
• The monument was dedicated to the nation amidst the musical
  notes played by the buglers of the Last Post from the roof of the historical
  Hussainiwala railway station. General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western
  Command, Lt Gen KJ Singh laid the inaugural wreath and observed a two minute
  silence as a mark of respect to the martyrs.

• Climate Change was announced as the theme of 2015 Science
  Express. This was announced during the first meeting of Science Express Climate
  Change Special (SECCS) chaired by Union Minister of Science and Technology Dr
  Harsh Vardhan on 8 July 2015 in New Delhi.
• The meeting was held to decide the overall contours of the
  theme and elicit suggestions from volunteers and experts involved in the
  running of the Express.

• It is a unique science exhibition mounted on a 16-coach AC
  train.
• Its focus is on spreading awareness about science and
  technology among students from schools and colleges and general public at
  large.
• It has been travelling across India successfully since 2007.            

• Telangana government and International Crops Research
  Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) on 7 July 2015 signed Memorandum
  of Understanding (MoU) to improve profitability of farmers.
• The MoU was signed by C Parthasarathi, Secretary and
  Agri-Production Commissioner; Jayesh Ranjan, Secretary, IT, Electronics &
  Communications; and ICRISAT Director General David Bergvinson.

• Under this MoU, the organisation will provide Information
  and Communication Technology (ICT)-based knowledge sharing platforms and other
  agricultural innovation initiatives to farmers in order to improve their
  productivity.

• Operation Smile, a unique initiative of Ghaziabad Police to
  track missing children, was in news in second week of July 2015. It came in
  news after Uttarakhand police under the operation was able to trace at least 44
  missing children from various parts of the state within a week.
• In another development, the police and the district
  administration of Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu has constituted five special teams to
  spearhead ‘Operation Smile.’
• The Operation Smile was launched by the Ghaziabad Police in
  2014 with an aim to search and restoration of missing children with their
  families. Under the operation, the police was able to recover 227 missing
  children within 30 days of launch.

• Credit Information Bureau India Ltd (CIBIL), India’s leader
  in credit information, has appointed Satish Pillai as its new Managing Director
  and Chief Executive Officer on Thursday.
• Pillai succeeds Arun Thukral who retires this year after a
  decade.
• Satish Pillai has been serving CIBIL in the capacity of
  Chief Operating Officer for more than four years where he was responsible for
  product development and bureau operations. Earlier, Pillai led TransUnion’s
  operations in India overlooking the creation of the solutions team that
  supported generic and custom analytics and decisioning technologies, including
  the launch of the CIBIL TransUnion Score- India’s first generic scoring model,
  CIBIL said in a statement.
• CIBIL, India’s largest credit information bureau, maintains
  credit information on more than 406 million consumer accounts and 22 million
  business accounts and has a membership base of over 1400 banks and credit
  institutions.

• Sriram Kalyanaraman was on 8 July 2015 appointed as Managing
  Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of National Housing Bank (NHB)
  for a period of Five Years. With this, Kalyanaraman became the first person
  form the Private Sector to head a Public Sector Financial Institution.
• Presently, Kalyanaraman is Director-Business Development of
  Equifax Credit Information Services. Prior to joining Equifax, Sriram was
  Director of Business Clients and Asset Products at Deutsche Bank India.
• National Housing Bank (NHB) is a wholly owned subsidiary of
  Reserve Bank of India (RBI). It was set up on 9 July 1988 under the National
  Housing Bank Act, 1987.

• Professor Lord Kamlesh Patel of Bradford OBE was on 8 July
  2015 appointed as an independent member on the 14-member board of the England and
  Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
• With this, he became the first British Asian to join the ECB
  Management Board which is chaired by Colin Graves and the President of the
  Board is Giles Clarke CBE.
• Lord Patel, who currently sits in the House of Lords as a
  Labour Peer will replace Lord Morris of Handsworth who is stepping down from
  the Board after serving for eleven years as an ECB Director.
• Earlier, he has worked for the Yorkshire Cricket Academy as
  a part-time coach. In 2014 he served on the judging panel of the inaugural
  Asian Cricket Awards supported by ECB.
• He has been one of the country’s most influential and authoritative
  spokesmen on issues relating to health, social care and equality and human
  rights.

• Senior IAS officer Sanjeev Nandan (SN)Sahai was on 8 July
  2015 appointed as the Home Secretary of Delhi. Sahai is a 1986 batch Union
  Territory cadre officer.
• Sahai succeeded senior IAS officer Dharam Pal, who was
  removed as Home Secretary in June 2015 by the AAP government.
• SahaI is the Finance Secretary of Delhi and had played
  crucial role in preparing budget for Delhi government.

• Indian shot-putter Inderjit Singh on 8 July 2015 came up
  with a best throw of 20.27 meter in the final attempt to win the Gold medal of
  men’s shot put event at the World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea.
• With this, he created history to become the first Indian to
  win a gold medal at the World University Games. In the last edition of the
  games in 2013 in Russia he had won silver medal in the shot put event.
• The silver medal of the event was won by Andrei Marius Gag
  of Romania with a throw of 19.92m while Alexander Bulanov of Russia took the
  bronze with a throw of 19.84m.
• In the year 2015, the 27-year old shot putter from Haryana
  has won gold medals in all the international events he has participated thus
  far.

• The Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports on 8 July
  2015 constituted an eight member committee to study status of Sports Authority
  of India (SAI) training centers across the country.
• The committee will be headed by former athlete Ashwini
  Nachappa and includes Pullela Gopi Chand as a member among others.
• The committee was formed against the backdrop of suicide
  attempt by four girl inmates at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) SAG Water
  Sports centre at Alappuzha, Kerala in May 2015 that resulted in death of one
  girl trainee.
• The committee was mandated to recommend measures to ensure
  that such incidents do not occur in future.

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