Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 21 June 2017

::National::

New indirect tax system would be kicked off on July 1

• Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the new indirect tax system would be kicked off on July 1 as the government had given enough time for people to be prepared for the transition.
• He also warned that consumers and producers in Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, which are yet to ratify the State GST law to facilitate the implementation of the GST under their jurisdiction, would lose out on the benefits of a single national tax.
• While 65 lakh out of 80 lakh assessees in the current indirect tax system have already registered themselves for the GST, the Finance Minister said in jest that the five people who had problems in registering were vocal about it on Twitter.
•  “Almost all States have cleared the State GST laws, except Kerala and J & K… I am told Kerala will consider it this week, while Jammu and Kashmir is going through the process and they will have to do it separately because of the State’s special status,” he said.
• The government has decided to hold a special programme in Parliament’s Central Hall close to the midnight of June 30.

Pakistan says execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav to stay till ICJ process

• Pakistan will not carry out the death sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav, the former Naval officer convicted on terror charges, until the process in the ICJ is over, even if that takes two to three years, Pakistan’s High Commissioner has said
• India went to the ICJ at The Hague on May 8 this year to appeal against the death sentence handed to Mr. Jadhav. 
• In the appeal India urged the court to call Pakistan’s military court trial against Mr. Jadhav, who was arrested in March 2016, “illegal” on the grounds that Pakistan had not granted India consular access, nor accepted his family’s appeals. 
• The ICJ has set the next dates for India and Pakistan to present their written submissions, or ‘memorials’ on September 13 and December 13 respectively.
• Confirming that Mr. Jadhav has some steps to go in the appeal process in Pakistan as well, Mr. Basit said he would be able to appeal for clemency first to Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa and President Mamnoon Husain if his appeal was rejected by the Court of Appeals. 

The Indian Navy’s first indigenously built floating dock, FDN-2, launched

• The Indian Navy’s first indigenously built floating dock (FDN-2), developed by Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T), was launched at L&T’s shipyard in Kattupalli.
• The floating dock is 185 metres long and 40 metres wide and will enable docking of all kinds of vessels, including Naval ships and submarines of up to 8,000 tonnes displacement, with draughts of up to seven metres, during both day and night.
• The Navy already has one floating dock; this would be its second such facility. FDN-2 will be based in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and will enhance the Navy’s technical repair infrastructure.
• FDN-2 adds much more capability and flexibilty to undertake repair and maintenance works. FDN-2 was designed and built by L&T at a cost of Rs. 468 crore.

NASA revealed 10 new rocky, Earth-sized planets that could potentially support life

• NASA revealed 10 new rocky, Earth-sized planets that could potentially have liquid water and support life.
• The Kepler mission team released a survey of 219 potential exoplanets — planets outside of our solar system — that had been detected by the space observatory launched in 2009 to scan the Milky Way galaxy.
• Ten of the new discoveries were orbiting their suns at a distance similar to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, the so-called habitable zone that could potentially have liquid water and sustain life.
• Kepler has already discovered 4,034 potential exoplanets, 2,335 of which have been confirmed by other telescopes as actual planets. The 10 new Earth-size planets bring the total to 50 that exist in habitable zones around the galaxy.
• The latest findings were released at the Fourth Kepler and K2 science conference being held this week at NASA’s Ames research centre in California.
• The telescope detects the presence of planets by registering minuscule drops in a star’s brightness.

::International::

Work on new settlement in West Bank started

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of work on a new settlement in the occupied West Bank as U.S. envoys prepared to discuss a new peace push. 
• “Today, the work on the ground has begun, as I promised, to establish a new settlement for the Amona settlers,” Mr. Netanyahu tweeted.
• The Amichai settlement, in the northern West Bank, is earmarked for some 40 families evicted from the outpost of Amona in February after a court order.

::Business and Economy::

States are vulnerable to a fiscal shock from farm loan waiver 

• Punjab, which became the latest State to announce a farm loan waiver scheme, is most vulnerable to a fiscal shock from such debt write-offs along with three other States, while Uttar Pradesh could also overshoot its fiscal deficit goals on the same account.
• While Andhra Pradesh and Telangana had announced farm loan waivers in 2014, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have followed in their footsteps recently. 
• Madhya Pradesh, where farmer protests took a violent turn recently, has resisted a blanket waiver for now, but promised a special zero-interest loan arrangement for defaulters of existing farm loans instead.
• Gujarat, Maharashtra and, to an extent, Karnataka, however, could cope with the strain of such a debt write-off scheme, as per the report, but this would depend on the extent of the loan waiver scheme’s coverage.
• On an aggregate basis, it estimates that the gross fiscal deficit of 17 States could go up by 60-90 basis points as a percentage of gross state domestic product and push States’ deficit beyond the 3% limit envisaged under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management framework for 2017-18.

India’s GDP growth will steadily rise from 7.4% to 7.5%

• India’s GDP growth will steadily rise from 7.4% to 7.5% in 2018-19 and to 7.6% in 2019-20, according to Fitch Ratings, which said growth would be boosted by the goods and services tax, increased public spending on infrastructure, and a supportive monetary policy over the last two years.
• The ratings agency added that the recovery in global growth was strengthening, with world GDP growth expected to pick up to 3.1% in 2018 from 2.5% in 2016. Fitch noted this would be the highest rate seen since 2010. 
• “We do, however, expect investment to gradually pick up from current lows, on the back of the transmission of supportive monetary policy of the past two years and stepped-up structural reforms,” Fitch Ratings said in a report.

Exporters sought incentives such as credit at affordable rates from the government

• Exporters sought incentives such as credit at affordable rates from the government with a view to boost India’s shipments.
• The issue was raised and discussed during the Board of Trade (BoT) meeting chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. 
• Commerce Secretary, Rita Teaotia, said that exporters and industry representatives from chambers including CII raised matters related to the GST.
• The objective of the BoT meeting was to take suggestions and inputs for the review of the Foreign Trade Policy (2015-20), which is expected to be released by the end of this month.

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