Current Affairs Nov 01, 2015

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01. Fresh sops to sagging exports: The Central Government has proposed to give new sops to arrest the trend of sagging exports, which showed a continuous decline for the past ten months. The Ministry of Commerce has increased the support to shipments of products like textile, telecom and electronic items under the “Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS)” scheme.

02. 2.75% ROI for Gold Bonds scheme: RBI has fixed a rate of Interest of 2.75% on the gold bond scheme. However, the interest is taxable as per the Income Tax Act 1961. Under the scheme, one can buy a minimum of 2 gm gold bonds, subject to a maximum of 500 gms.

03. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to receive funds from Private Banks and Foreign Banks: NPCI which is the nodal agency for retail payments in India will be receiving funds of Rs.60 crores, which it had targeted from Private Sector Banks / Foreign Banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank, Indus Ind Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.

04. ICICI Bank to sell its stakes in ICICI Lombard: ICICI Bank will be selling its stakes to the tune of 9% amounting to Rs.1550 crores in ICICI Lombard Insurance Company. This will be sold to Fairfax Financial Holdings, a co-owner of ICICI Lombard Insurance.

05. Gold Imports dip by 45.6%: Gold imports dipped 45.62% to come down to USD 2.05 billion at the end of October . The gold imports stood at USD 3.78 billion in September 2014. The contraction in imports helped in narrowing the trade deficit to USD 10.47 billion in September.

06. BBIN Road agreement implemented: BBIN road agreement (Bangladesh-Bhutan- India- Nepal) road agreement which will reduce the distances between the places considerably was implemented recently. The BBIN Motor Vehicles Agreement, signed on June 15, 2015, allows vehicles to enter each other's territory and eliminates trans-shipment of goods from one country's truck to another at the border, a time consuming and costly process.