Wednesday, 24th July, 2013

HEADLINES

• RBI puts further curbs on banks
• Maritime visionary C.P Srivastava dies

NATIONAL NEWS

• RBI puts further curbs on banks
  • The Reserve Bank of India , on Tuesday, imposed further curbs on banks with a view to draining liquidity from the system. The central bank has told banks to necessarily maintain a minimum daily balance of 99 per cent of the CRR requirement, up from 70 per cent currently.
  • The RBI has also prescribed individual limits for banks to access the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), a monetary policy tool. LAF allows banks to borrow money from the RBI by selling their securities through repurchase agreements. LAF is mainly intended to help banks adjust any mismatch in daily liquidity

• Food grains output declines, pulses touch record level
  • Foodgrains output this year (2012-13) has declined by 3.64 million tonnes over the previous year. Drought in parts of some States last year adversely impacted rice, wheat and coarse cereals harvest. Pulses production on the other hand, has shown a remarkable improvement at 18.45 million tonnes as against 17.09 million tonnes, the previous year.
  • The shortfall in food grains production is, however, likely to be made up in the 2013-14 crop year with the kharif (paddy) sown area about 114 lakh hectares higher so far than last year, owing to good southwest monsoon.
  • The higher output is attributed to handsome enhancement in the minimum support price and a special thrust under the National Food Security Mission. India traditionally imports about 3 to 3.5 million tonnes of pulses to fill up the gap in demand and supply.
  • In oilseeds and commercial crops, the output of oilseeds is higher at 310.06 million tonnes over 297 the previous year. While cotton and mesta outputs are lower, jute has done better than the previous year. Sugarcane output in 2012-13 is lower at 3389.63 lakh tonnes over 3610.37 lakh tonnes in the previous year. This is due to severe drought last year in parts of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

• No GM field trials till regulation gaps are addressed says TEC final report
  • The final report of the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) set up by the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has said that it will not be “advisable” to conduct more field trials till gaps in the regulatory system are addressed.
  • Stakeholder participation, need, socioeconomic considerations, societal impact, and sustainability should be some of the dimensions to be incorporated in the risk assessment and this should be done at an early stage in the risk assessment process.
  • There is a need to include chronic and trans-generational toxicity testing.
  • The single largest number of applications for field trials to the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is for Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis — a commonly occurring bacterium found in insect-rich habitats and soils) transgenic (including food crops such as rice and a range of vegetables).
  • The TEC pointed out that the safety of Bt transgenics with regard to chronic toxicity had not been established and this needs to be done before it can be considered safe. In this regard, the largest deployment of transgenics worldwide is in soybean, corn, cotton, and canola, all of which are used primarily for oil or feed. Nowhere are Bt transgenics bring widely consumed in large amounts for any major food crop that is directly used for human consumption. The TEC found no compelling reason for India to be the first to do so.

• India china begin meeting
  • New Delhi and Beijing began a two-day meeting of the ‘Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Affairs’ to eliminate issues of discord along the LAC. This is the third meeting of the Mechanism, set up early last year, for timely handling of border incidents

• Goa slaps green cess on polluting products
  • The Goa government imposed a green cess on all polluting products to net additional revenue. Polluters who fail to pay the cess could be fined up to Rs.1 lakh, according to the Goa Cess on Products and Substances Causing Pollution (Green Cess) Act

• New portal for farmers launched
  • Good news for farmers and those engaged in food processing sector. A new web portal eFresh, a multilingual portal, has been launched to connect farmers with prospective entrepreneurs.
  • The web portal, billed as one stop source of information by its promoters, has been designed to meet the requirements of all stakeholders in the food chain from farmers to processors.
  • The portal would consist of technical information related to crops, including soil testing, weather reports, crop information, irrigation facilities, food safety and quality of primary produce. In addition, effort has been made to incorporate use of hi-tech methods in horticulture, medicinal plants, plastic mulching, nurseries and related information on the portal.

• Pay if you pollute the yamuna, orders national green tribunal
  • The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has invoked the “Polluter Pays” principle to deal with the problem of pollution and dumping of debris on the Yamuna bank.
  • The NGT order said any person found dumping debris on the river bank at the Geeta Colony site or any other site will have to cough up Rs. 5 lakh for causing pollution. The offender will also have to remove the debris.
  • “The fine so imposed shall be recovered from the person who is responsible for dumping of debris i.e., truck owner as well as person to whom the debris belongs i.e., by whose property demolition the debris have been created. Even the contractor who is carrying on the business of dumping of debris shall be equally responsible

• MGNREGA workers to be used for executing railway projects
  • Railway Minister M. Mallikarjun Kharge has said that the Railway Ministry will use funds allocated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) for 250-km new Warda-Nanded-Yatmal railway line in Maharashtra.
  • Mr. Kharge told presspersons here on Tuesday that the use of the MNREGA funds for the railway projects would help in achieving the twin objective of utilising the funds for creating permanent assets besides providing regular work, and also prevent the misuse of the MNREGA funds at the ground level

OPINION/EDITORIALS

• Article by CEC on political parties and criminal candidates
• Editorial on the recent diabetes drug controversy

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

• India – Israel negotiate FTA
  • Israel is negotiating with India the contours of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), said Eli Belotsercovsky, Director of Economic Relations with India and China in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
  • Israel’s trade with China is about $8 billion, compared to $5 billion with India
  • diamonds accounted for about 30-40 per cent of the two-way trade between the two countries
  • “Israel had adopted a look East policy much before the global slowdown began.”