Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams 1 September 2017

::National::

ISRO’S launch of IRNSS-1H failed

• In a double whammy to the Indian space programme, the PSLV-C39 mission carrying the replacement navigation satellite IRNSS-1H failed.
• This was the PSLV’s first failure — in what was seen as a routine mission — after 39 continuously successful launches and only the second such instance since 1993.
• The spacecraft was stuck in the heat shield in the last and fourth stage of the launch vehicle; it did not release into space as planned.
• All stages of the mission performed well. But there was a mishap. The satellite is still inside the fourth stage.
• The heat shield did not separate; as a result the satellite is enclosed in the body of the fourth stage.
• A PSLV flight lasts for 19 minutes. Normally the heat shield separates three minutes into launch but ISRO officials apparently waitied through the entie flight period before conceding the failure.
• The unprecedented non-release of the 1425-kg satellite halts a dream run of successful launches of the PSLV. The light lift workhorse booster was the pride of ISRO and a commercial success; its only failure was the first developmental launch of September 1993.
• On the one hand, the launch may somewhat dent the image that the PSLV commands in the global small-to-medium lifting launchers market. It has been easily the most-sought- after vehicle for small satellites of up to 600-700 kg. It has launched 209 satellites of 28 countries since it went commercial in 1999.
• Antrix Corporation, ISRO’s commercial arm, has firmed up many more client satellites, its chief had earlier said. On the other hand, the failure comes even as ISRO attempts to outsource satellite making to domestic industry. The rocket was carrying the satellite that ISRO assembled by involving a consortium of six Indian small and medium industries.

Rajiv Mehrishi is the new CAG

• The outgoing Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi was appointed Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), while former Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Secretary Sunil Arora was appointed Election
• Commissioner to fill the vacancy in the three-member Election Commission. Both are former IAS officers of the Rajasthan cadre.
• Mr. Mehrishi completed his two-year stint as Home Secretary and handed over the charge to Rajiv Gauba. Mr. Mehrishi has been one of the most favourite bureaucrats of the current administration, which had brought him from Rajasthan as Secretary, Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance immediately after the government took over in 2014.
• Subsequently, he was appointed Home Secretary for two years on the day he superannuated from the Ministry of Finance in 2015. Rajiv Kumar, a 1984 batch IAS and currently Establishment Officer, was made Secretary, Financial Services, in the Finance Ministry. Asha Ram Sihag was shifted from Cabinet Secretariat to Heavy Industries Ministry as Secretary.

Appoint Permanent Medical boards to hear abortion pleas’

• The Centre informed the Supreme Court that it has written to States and Union Territories about the court’s suggestion to appoint permanent medical boards to provide women, especially rape survivors, urgent access to medical care and to consider their requests for abortion.
• The government’s submission came during a hearing in the case of a Pune-based woman who was permitted by the court to medically terminate her 24-week-old foetus detected with abnormalities.
• A Bench led by Justice S.A. Bobde banked on the medical opinion of doctors at the B.J. Government Hospital in Pune and found it “in the interest of justice” for the 20-year-old woman to terminate her pregnancy. The medical board, in its report, said the foetus was without a brain and skull.
• Meanwhile, the court deferred the hearing on a similar plea by a Mumbai-based woman for abortion as she could not be examined by the medical board due to the floods that have brought the city to a standstill.
• Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar said that the government’s communication to the States and Union Territories was in compliance with the court’s suggestion, during the recent hearing of a separate case of a 10-year-old pregnant rape survivor, to set up permanent medical boards. The apex court, in that case, was compelled to deny abortion as the pregnancy had crossed the 20-week mark under which the law allows abortion.

All India programme to test all TB patients

• Beginning September, health authorities will commence a nationwide programme to test every tuberculosis (TB) patient for signs of resistance to first-line drugs.
• Other than providing a realistic assessment on the scale of resistance to commonly-available tuberculosis drugs, experts said this could also reveal a large number of hidden tuberculosis patients, as well greater numbers of those with multiple infections of TB and HIV.
• Even as India tops the world in the number of tuberculosis cases, the WHO (World Health Organisation) estimates that possibly as many as a million Indians with TB could be outside government scrutiny.
• In 2015 alone, nine million Indians were tested for suspected tuberculosis and about 900,000 were confirmed to be ailing from it. Nearly 3% of new TB cases and 18% of prevalent cases are believed to be drug resistant, though independent analyses peg these numbers as much higher.
• The new policy, called the Universal Drug Sensitivity Test, which was formalised, will be implemented using a molecular diagnostic test called GeneXpert, a US-developed technology tool being used worldwide since 2010.
• It can detect the TB bacterium as well check for resistance to rifampicin, one of the standard key TB drugs, within 90 minutes. Conventional tests take at least a day or more and require well-trained personnel for similar results.
• The programme will first be implemented in the States mentioned and then expanded to rest of country. States that will first see this policy being implemented include Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand.
• States will have access to more geneXpert machines but the implementation is their responsibility.These, however, are not the States with the highest tuberculosis burden.
• The WHO’s TB statistics for India for 2015 — the latest available — gives an estimated incidence figure of 2.2 million cases of TB for India out of a global incidence of 9.6 million.
• An inability to rapidly diagnose multi-drug resistant tuberculosis has long been identified as among the chinks in India’s strategy to eliminate tuberculosis.
• There are only around 600GeneXpert devices now in use roughly one for each district and this posed a stumbling block to deploying the WHO-recommended kits earlier.
• GeneXpert kits, though one of their kind, are also known to be expensive, as well as requiring air-conditioned settings and reliable electricity access for optimal output. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is in the process of testing a cheaper alternative to GeneXpert called Truenat MTB, which is reportedly more portable, battery-operated, and performs as well at lower costs.

‘sahayak’ system

• Despite the military reforms approved by the Cabinet, Army sources say there is no immediate end to the sahayak system that is actually holding up thousands of combat soldiers from active duty.
• The Cabinet approved a series of reforms meant to enhancing the combat capability and rebalancing defence expenditure of the Army to increase the teeth-to-tail ratio by which 57,000 soldiers would be redeployed to operational duties.
• The recommendations were made by a committee headed by Lt. Gen. (retd.) DB Shekatkar. Surprisingly, the committee which had a wide-ranging mandate and made about 99 recommendations did not include any on the system.
• There are over 30,000 soldiers employed as sahayaks or orderlies both in peacetime and forward locations. There have been recommendations, time and again, to end the practice and replace the sahayaks in peacetime locations with civilians freeing up the soldiers for combat roles.
• The debate was renewed early this year, when several videos had surfaced on social media in which soldiers vented out views against the discrimination under the system. Following this, Army Chief Gen. Bipin Rawat strongly defended it and warned personnel against taking to social media to air views as it “affects the morale of the jawans and thereby the Army”.
• The government too had strongly defended the system while promising a full review.

::International::

First ever probe against Chinese firm in Pakistan

• Pakistan has launched the first-ever probe against a Chinese firm in a high-profile money laundering case, according to a media report.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) yesterday forwarded the request to Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) after pressed both by Pakistan and Chinese officials.
• Dawn reported that the case is among the most complicated issues faced by the SECP and the commission has remained secretive about the matter for a long time. It was not even shared with the Finance Minister by the former chairman of the SECP Zafar Hijazi, who is now suspended.
• Investigations against the Jiangsu Yabaite Technology, listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), were initiated last year after suspicious foreign inflows were detected in its accounts.
• The company told the Chinese regulators that it had received the amount after executing work on the Multan Metro Bus project and the CSRC approached the SECP in December for assistance in information, including certain documents.
• The SECP yesterday forwarded letters to the FIA and provincial authorities along with the information and documents pertaining to the case.
• The SECP acknowledged that there were certain issues related to the Chinese company and the Multan project after the CSRC authorised it to share certain segments of its request with the authorities concerned in Pakistan.
• A statement released by the SECP said the CSRC was not conducting any investigation into the Multan Metro Bus project. Once the SECP receives the CSRC’s report, it would be in a position to assess any possible violation in Pakistan, it said.
• During the investigation by the CSRC, Yabaite China said that it worked as a subcontractor of the Capital Engineering and Construction Company, a subcontractor itself of a consortium for a section of the project.

::Economy::

GDP growth is slow

• India’s GDP grew at 5.7% between April to June 2017 — the slowest pace recorded in 13 quarters or since the NDA government assumed office in May 2014 — led by a sharp decline in industrial activity that officials ascribed largely to an inventory drawdown by firms ahead of the rollout of GST from July 1.
• GDP growth in the last quarter of 2016-17 was 6.1%, marking a steady decline from the 7.9% clocked in the April to June quarter. The gross value added (GVA) in the economy grew at 5.6%, same as the previous quarter but sharply lower than the 7.6% growth in the first quarter of the last year. Economist Ajit Ranade pointed out that this is the sixth continuous quarter marking a decline in growth.
• “The principal decline in growth is on account of industry, which comes in at 1.6% compared to 7.4% last year,” Chief Statistician TCA Anant said.
• Industrial output grew by 3.1% in the previous quarter. Analysts reckoned this to be the worst quarter for the manufacturing sector in five years, with growth at 1.2% compared to 5.3% in the previous quarter and 10.7% in the same quarter last year. That mining activity also shrank by 0.7%, compared to a 6.4% growth last quarter, didn’t help.
• Dr. Anant stressed that a large part of this dip was due to a rise in input costs as well as an unprecedented “high level of inventory de-accumulation” in the first quarter as firms were worried if the GST regime would grant them input tax credits for output generated before its implementation.
• The numbers are consistent with the longer run narrative of decline and since the WPI effect is now working itself out of the system, subsequent periods would restore to more normal levels of growth and you will not see a downfall in growth, which you saw from the second quarter of last year, going ahead,” he said.
• While the services sector did fairly well, growing at 8.7% compared to 9% in the same quarter last year, the gross value added by the agriculture sector dipped from 2.5% in the first quarter of last year to 2.3%.
• “Even though the crop production side has seen an increase compared to last year, overall agriculture comes in marginally lower because of the other elements of agriculture, which is principally animal husbandry that is slightly lower,” the Secretary in the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry said.
• The Finance Minister also said that manufacturing has ‘bottomed out,’ services have improved and gross fixed capital formulation has turned positive. Gross fixed capital formation, which reflect the investments into the country, stood at a four-quarter high of 29.8% of GDP, but was still lower than the 31% clocked in the same quarter of 2016-17.
• Rating agency Crisil said the growth data suggests that the gains to the tax base from demonetisation may have been overemphasised in haste. “The difference in GDP and GVA growth is net product taxes. So given that GDP growth at 5.7% is only 10 basis points more than the GVA growth of 5.6%, claims of real tax gains from enlarging tax base after demonetisation seems a too-early conclusion. However, this may see pick-up going ahead as the government firms up its accounting exercise,” Crisil said in a note.

Telecom sector to form Panel for providing relief

• ‘The Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG), formed to look into the financial woes of the telecom sector, on submitted its report after over three months of deliberations.
• It is learnt that the IMG, in its report which had not been made public, had made some suggestions for providing relief to the sector while pointing out that “green shoots” of recovery were visible in the sector.
• The report, which was finalised after discussions with stakeholders, including banks and telecom firms, would now be placed before the Telecom Commission, which was the highest decision making body in the Department of Telecom.
• One of the recommendations made by the IMG is to extend the timeline for deferred spectrum payment by telecom companies to 16 years instead of the 10 at present, a source said.
• The Telecom Commission’s next meeting is scheduled to be held on September 8 and is likely to take up the IMG report.

WTO- farm subsidies

• India and China have jointly submitted a proposal to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) calling for the elimination of the most trade-distorting form of farm subsidies by the developed countries as a prerequisite for consideration of other reforms in domestic support negotiations.
• This is an important proposal by India and China in view of the ongoing negotiations for the upcoming 11th Ministerial Conference (MC) of the WTO to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017.
• It counters the efforts by some countries to target the subsidies of the developing countries while letting the developed countries retain their huge farm subsidies
• The MC is the WTO’s highest decision making body. As per the joint paper, developed countries, including the U.S., the EU and Canada, had been consistently providing trade-distorting subsidies to their farmers at levels much higher than the ceiling applicable to developing countries, the statement said.

Core sector output grew 2.4%

• Core sector output grew 2.4% year-on-year in July, helped by a low base in sectors including steel and electricity.
• The production performance of eight core industries — which comprise 40.27% of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) — in July 2017 was faster than June’s 0.8%, but slower than the 3.1% pace recorded in July 2016. Cumulative growth during April-July, 2017-18, was 2.5%.
• Nevertheless, half of the eight constituents recorded a YoY contraction in July 2017, namely, refinery products, crude oil, cement and fertilisers.
• There was mixed evidence of post-GST inventory rebuilding, with a robust pick-up in growth of steel output in July 2017 (9.2%) relative to June 2017 (5.8%), in contrast to the continued, albeit narrowing contraction in production of cement (-2.0% in July 2017 vs. -6.3% in June 2017). Cement output shrank for the eighth consecutive month.
• Given the favourable base effect and the rebuilding of domestic inventories post-GST, we expect the IIP to revert to a YoY rise in July 2017, although the pace of growth may be subdued relative to the 5.2% recorded in July 2016.
• Electricity generation registered a 5.4% growth in July 2017 from 2.2% in June 2017 and 2.1% in July 2016. Besides a favourable base effect, this also reflected a slight improvement in industrial demand following the introduction of the GST regime. Coal production grew by just 0.7% in July.

Centre pushes for RBI to increase dividend

• The Centre is pushing for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to enhance its dividend payout to the exchequer for the year 2016-17.
• The RBI transferred just Rs. 30,659 crore as dividend for the year gone by to the exchequer less than half the Rs. 65, 876 crore it had paid in 2015-16.
• The government had budgeted for a Rs. 58,000 crore dividend from the RBI in its Budget for this fiscal year.
• The RBI has calculated a surplus of Rs. 44,000 crore and has transferred Rs. 30,000 crore to the government.
• The development assumes significance as the Centre had been downplaying the central bank’s disclosure that about 99% of the demonetised Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 currency notes had returned to the central bank with just about Rs. 16,000 crore remaining outside.
• This had dispelled the hope of a large surplus transfer from the RBI to the government on account of notes that weren’t returned to the formal system for fear of attracting the taxman’s attention.
• The government had issued an ordinance in December to extinguish the Reserve Bank of India’s liability towards honouring such notes.
• The demonetisation exercise had hit RBI’s finances in a big way as the cost of printing new notes more than doubled to Rs. 7,965 crore in 2016-17 compared with Rs. 3,421 crore in the previous year.
• RBI’s income for the period declined to Rs. 61,818 crore from Rs. 80,870 crore, while its total expenditure more than doubled to Rs. 31,155 crore, from Rs. 14,990 crore.
• The central bank’s income was also impacted due to rupee appreciation and liquidity mop up.
• Expenditure also increased due to higher printing and freight charges for notes and higher provisions for the contingency fund.

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