Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 04 August, 2014

Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday expressed India’s commitment and assistance to Nepal’s development and promising to take the two countries’ relations to a new height.
Mr. Modi referred to the Nepal-India relationship as “older than the Himalayas and the Ganga,” even as he announced a $1 billion Line of Credit for Nepal’s infrastructure development. Mr. Modi also promised to help Nepal in the field of hydropower, infrastructure, space technology and agriculture.
He assured that the work on Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project would begin in a year. After years of negotiations, work on this joint venture project has not begun. Nepal could prosper by selling electricity to India.
The Indian Prime Minister assured Mr. Koirala that the ongoing peace process in Nepal was entirely a Nepali matter and should be concluded as per Nepal’s requirements.
In the presence of the two Prime Ministers, the officials signed three memorandum of understanding (MoU) – tourism development in Nepal, Goitre Control Programme in Nepal, and co-operation between the state-controlled television channels – Doordarshan and Nepal Television (NTV). They also exchanged terms of reference (ToR) on Pancheshwar Development Authority.
Mr. Modi would offer prayers at the Pahuspati Temple on Monday before heading to the President’s Office to meet President Dr Ram Baran Yadav.

The oil ministry is looking at a price of $ 6-6.5 for all domestic natural gas but wants Reliance Industries to sell KG-D6 gas at old rate of $4.2 till it makes up for shortfall in supplies of past four years.
The ministry internally discussed tweaking the formula suggested by the C. Rangarajan Committee to bring down the proposed increase from $ 8.4-8.8 per million British thermal unit to $ 6-6.5, a rate that will be affordable to most consumers and also incentivise exploration.
The entire output of KG—D6 field including MA and production from newer fields like R—Series and satellites will not get the revised rate till the shortfall in output is met.
RIL’s has about 5 Tcf of gas reserves in gas finds its KG and Mahanadi basin block that are valued at $ 21 billion at current price of $4.2 and at $42 billion at $8.4 gas rate. It would take $14 billion to bring these finds to production, irrespective of gas price.

Telecom operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, RCom, Aircel, Tata Tele and BSNL have not paid penalties totalling Rs 2,116.95 crore levied on them for non-compliance of subscriber verification rules that are important for national security, CAG said in its report.
The Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) Cell levies Rs 1,000 penalty for every wrong Customer Application Form (CAF) filled for mobile connections if 95 per cent of forms are correct.
The penalty escalates to Rs 5,000 per wrong CAF if compliance rate is between 90-95 per cent and goes up to 50,000 per form if it is below 80 per cent. CAG estimated that the total penalty in the year 2012 alone works out to be at Rs 4,204.33 crore as compared to Rs 2,506.80 crore levied by the DoT.
CAG has said that government has not achieved 100 per cent complaince to subscriber verification rules because of “ineffective monitoring and weak control by DoT and the TERM Cells.”