(Current Affairs For SSC Exams) Economic August: 2014

August-2014

Driven substantially by the higher education sector, real estate deals and mining income, India’s black economy could now be nearly three-quarters the size of its reported Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
There were no “reliable” estimates of black money generated in India and held within and outside the country, the government commissioned the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) to estimate the black money in India and held overseas by Indians.
The capitation fees collected by private colleges, on management quota seats in professional courses, last year was around Rs 5,953 crore.

The Government is planning to finalise and notify an upgraded penalty structure after its strategy of imposing fines on companies with unverified mobile phone subscribers paid marginal dividends.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has been invoking licence conditions to impose penalties on companies slow in verifying whether subscribers have complied with the formalities of providing their residential address and other details.
The Department of Telecom has always drawn short when penalising private companies. Every year about two dozen telecom operators attract penalties for various offences but the actual money flowing to the Government Exchequer has hovered around the 15 to 20 per cent mark.
According to DoT, these phone companies have been unable to account for the identity and residence proofs of over 4.5 crore SIM cards. Companies should have paid heed to the country’s national security interests while competing with each other to enrol more customers.

In a bid to revive BSNL and MTNL, Department of Telecom is working on modalities to merge the two state-run telecom companies and also undertake organisational restructuring
Asked if there is a timeline for the merger, the source said there is no set timeframe but it might take one to two years.
Minister of Communications and IT Ravishankar Prasad had also met the senior management of BSNL and MTNL recently to discuss the blueprint for reviving the loss-making PSU telecom companies.
The total debt of the two firms has increased to Rs. 21,208 crore at the end of June 2014.

“A labour problem cannot be solved using police force,” said Justice P. Devadass of the Madras High Court, while releasing on conditional bail 167 workers arrested on the Independence Day for staging a demonstration at the KancheepuramCollectorate.
The judge said the arrested could not be treated as hardened criminals as they did not possess any lethal weapon.
The police or public or public officials were not their enemies. They were airing their grievance against the management of a company.

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is gearing up to bid for the government’s ambitious bullet train project, its Executive Chairman A. M. Naik, said.
He said that L&T had emerged as the lowest price bidder for the SardarVallabhbhai Patel’s Statue of Unity project in Gujarat though the contract was yet to be awarded.
The company is also expecting bigger opportunities from infrastructure projects, including metro rail.

Online marketplace Snapdeal and Tata Value Homes, a subsidiary of Tata Housing with focus on affordable housing , announced partnership to enable users to buy houses online.
As part of the partnership, about 1,000 homes across projects in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Chennai will be put up for sale on Snapdeal. These houses are priced between Rs.18 lakh and Rs.70 lakh and range from 1 BHK to 3 BHK.
Tata Value Homes will continue to sell through its own portal as well.
Upon possession of the house, customers buying the house through Snapdeal will get Rs.10,000 a month for a year as an assured rent (whether they stay on premise or lease it out) as part of the deal.

The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) has proposed rolling out a loan assistance scheme that will for the first time help transgenders and economically weaker sections to secure home loans in urban areas.
The Ministry has tweaked the existing Rajiv RinnYojna (RRY), which was launched as an instrument to aid the EWS (economically weaker sections) and LIG (lower income group) segments in urban areas, through enhanced credit flow and replaced it with a new scheme that will make it easier for the economically weaker sections and minority groups to own homes.
The RRY launched by the UPA government with much fanfare failed to take off and funds earmarked for it lapsed.
The Ministry has now not only given it a new name — HOMES (Home Owners Mortgage Equity Subvention Scheme) but has also made it more attractive by enhancing the loan amount and increasing the interest subsidy from 5 per cent to 5.5 per cent on loans granted to construct houses or extend the existing ones.

Union Finance Minister ArunJaitley has expressed hope that Parliament will pass the Insurance Bill for raising the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit to 49 per cent by the end of this year, the first major economic reform proposed by the NarendraModi Government.
The UPA Government had originally proposed raising the FDI cap back in 2008 when it introduced the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill. However, opposition from political parties, including the BJP, did not allow the Bill to be taken up in the RajyaSabha.
The Modi Government introduced a fresh Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill in Parliament earlier this month. It proposes a rider that management control rests in the hands of an Indian promoter alongside the eased FDI cap.
After the introduction of the Bill, the government moved 97 amendments because of which it could not be passed.

The Union Cabinet lifted the restriction of one LPG cylinder per month to a domestic consumer. While households will still get only 12 cylinders in a year at subsidised rates.
The monthly cap has been lifted in view of complaints from consumers regarding the limited access to LPG imposed by the earlier restriction.
Now consumers can avail themselves of their quota of 12 cylinders at any time of the year.

The Government is likely to approve a hike in dearness allowance (DA) to 107 per cent from the existing 100 per cent, benefiting around 30 lakh Centre’s employees and its 50 lakh pensioners including dependents.
“The average rate of retail inflation for industrial workers from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014 works out to be 7.25 per cent. Thus the Central government will hike dearness allowance for it employees by 7 per cent,” an official said.
He said the Finance Ministry will now put a Cabinet proposal for approval of 7 per cent DA hike from July 1 this year as the revised Consumer Price Index-Industrial Workers data for June was released by Labour Ministry on Saturday.
With increase in DA, the pensioners will also gain as the benefit provided to them as dearness relief will be hiked to 107 per cent of basic pay.
The previous UPA government had increased DA to 100 per cent from 90 per cent with effect from January 1, 2014, on February 28 on the basis of agreed formula for revision of the allowance.
Competition Commission of India puts Sun-Ranbaxy deal under public scrutiny
The Competition Commission, which has put the multi-billion dollar Sun-Ranbaxy deal for public scrutiny, said the major issue is whether the combination would result in high market concentration of certain molecules.