Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 27June, 2015

Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

The emerging market BRICS nations will have their own development bank by the end of the year, South Africa said on Saturday.
The BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India,China and South Africa -- which represent 40% of the world's population and a quarter of its economic output, decided in 2013 to create their own development bank to step up lending for the infrastructure projects needed to close the gap with the industrialised world.
The bank, which will be headquartered in Shanghai, is expected to have up to USD 100 billion in capital.
The inaugural meeting of the board of governors of the New Development Bank will be held in the Russian city of Ufa on July 7 to confirm the appointment of the management of the lender.
Maasdorp, who heads up southern African operations for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was formerly an advisor to the current head of South Africa's central bank, Tito Mboweni, and supervised the government's privatisation programme from 1999 to 2002.

A ranking of destinations for attractiveness to foreign investors has placed India at the top among 110 countries. China has secured the 65th position and the U.S. is at the 50th. In the 2014 index, India was at the sixth position and Hong Kong was number one.
The ranking is based on an index for baseline profitability that assumes that three factors affect the ultimate success of a foreign investment: how much the value of an asset grows; the preservation of that value while the asset is owned; and the ease of repatriation of proceeds from selling the asset.
The index combines measures for each of these factors into a summary statistic that conveys a
A high ranking indicates high returns and improving economic institutions. The index, thus, compares how local policies and conditions affect the same investment in different countries. Or how the value of the principal and the return will change depending only on where the investment is made.
Local factors can erode profits. These include payment of bribes and kickbacks, the risk of which is compared across countries using the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, a measure for the perceived levels of public-sector corruption worldwide. In 2014, the country was at the 85th position out of 175 countries as compared to its ranking of 94 out of 177 in 2013.

BPI calculation also uses an index of investor protection compiled by the World Bank. In 2014, the average BPI score across all countries was 0.99; this year it is 1.03 — meaning the expected returns over the next five years are about three-quarters of a per cent higher a year.

The Cellular Operators Association of India, a body of GSM and CDMA mobile service providers, on Friday, said that the government should take steps to vacate the unused spectrum lying with various agencies under it.
“Nearly 450 MHz of spectrum in various bands are lying with 13 government agencies such as Army, Navy, Airforce, border police, state police, AIR, DD and space,” Director-General of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) Ranjan Mathews told reporters on the sidelines of a BCCI event here.
TRAI definition for broadband in the country was 512 kbps, which, compared to the international standard of two mbps, was very low.
In India, each telecom operator was given 12 to 15 MHz of spectrum, while internationally it was 45 to 50 MHZ.
With five million new customers being added each month, this was putting pressure on putting the networks in place.

Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India R. Gandhi said that the government’s recent move to encourage electronic transactions in favour of cash dealings was a welcome step and that it would help in curbing banking fraud cases.
Earlier this month, the government released a draft proposal that, if accepted, would see income tax benefits for consumers, who predominantly use electronic transactions for payments . The draft proposal also sought to incentivise merchants to opt for e-payments rather than cash transactions.
The Deputy Governor, during his speech at the conference, also said that deposit-related frauds were on the wane, while advance-related frauds and cyber frauds were on the rise..

A key step towards curbing such cases of fraud, he said, was improving banks’ KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures. “When one thinks of KYC norms frequently the emphasis is on the different type of documents to be obtained from an account holder that will establish that KYC norms have been followed.
In a scenario where many frauds are committed by submitting forged and fabricated documents, such an emphasis is too narrow and will result in us missing the wood for the trees.

India could raise steel tariffs further to check a surge of imports, a minister said on Friday, but local steel firms are concerned that free trade agreements with Japan and South Korea would still let those countries boost shipments.
Amid a global glut, steel imports jumped 72 per cent in the last fiscal year to March to 9.3 million tonnes. South Korea and Japan together sent 3.5 million.
Imports in April and May, the first two months of the new fiscal year, rose 55 per cent to 1.67 million tonnes. But shipments from Japan soared 111 per cent and those from South Korea 51 per cent.
Heavy Industries Minister Anant Geete said he would meet finance ministry officials within a week to discuss more measures to ‘safeguard’ the local industry and check the quality of imported steel, after companies complained recent duty increases of up to 2.5 percentage points were inadequate.
The steel ministry is in favour of taking steel out of the FTAs, according to government and industry sources with knowledge of the issue, but such a decision was unlikely in the near term, given government-to-government relations.
Growth in Indian steel demand was expected to be the highest among the world’s 10 biggest users this year and the next, the World Steel Association says.
April-May consumption rose seven per cent after growth of three per cent last fiscal year, but local mills have not benefited: their output rose just 0.8 per cent in April-May while exports slumped 36 per cent.