Current Affairs 22nd February

National Affairs

1. Nitin Gadkari laid the groundwork for Maharashtra’s Anubhuti Inclusive Park, the largest Divyang park in the world.

Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, laid the foundation stone for Nagpur, Maharashtra’s “Divyang Park – Anubhuti Inclusive Park,” which is the largest and only one of its kind in the world.

 

About the Anubhuti Inclusive Park Divyang Park:

 

Nitin Gadkari has referred to Divyang Park – Anubhuti Inclusive Park as the first accessible park for disabled people in the world.

 

This 90,000-square-foot park was funded by approximately Rs 12 crore from the Indian government’s Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE).

 

Facilities for all 21 types of disabilities will be available at the park, including a touch-and-smell garden, a hydrotherapy unit, water therapy, and an independent room for mentally ill children and their mothers.

 

This park act is a move made in accordance with the 2016 Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPWD Act).

 

Note:

 

The Hindi word “divyang” means “one with a divine body part.”

Before this, people with disabilities are called viklang. The word viklang is

Hindi for somebody with non-practical body parts. Head of the state Narendra Modi,

expressed the word divyang and begat another significance for it.

 

Concerning the 2016 Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPWD Act)

 

On December 13, 2006, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) was established. India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on October 1, 2007, after signing it.

 

RPWD Act was ordered in 2016 and came into force in 2017 to give impact to the

UNCRPD. The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights, and Full Participation) Act of 1995 was superseded by this new law.

 

In the educational, social, legal, economic, cultural, and political spheres, the act promotes and safeguards the rights and dignity of people with disabilities.

 

Disabilities of all kinds: The act covers 21 different kinds of disabilities as of right now.

2. Extensive DUSTLIK IV – 2023: Uttarakhand marks the beginning of the fourth India-Uzbekistan Joint Military Exercise.

The fourth iteration of the bilateral joint military exercise between the Indian Army and the Uzbek Army, Ex-DUSTLIK IV – 2023, began on February 20, 2023, at the Foreign Training Node in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand. The joint exercise, which will last for 14 days, will end on March 5, 2023.

 

Aim:

 

To foster cooperative relationships and cooperation between the two armies ii. to improve the military’s capacity to carry out multi-domain operations under a UN mandate in a Sub Conventional setting.

 

Participants:

 

45 soldiers from the Indian Army and Uzbekistan.

The Indian contingent will be addressed by the fourteenth Unit, The GARHWAL

RIFLES, part of Western Order and the contingent from Uzbekistan is

addressed by troops of the North Western Military Region of Uzbekistan

Armed force.

 

Key Points:

 

Under the UN mandate, it will concentrate on joint counterterrorist operations in mountainous and semi-urban settings.

 

Field training exercises, combat discussions, lectures, demonstrations, and a validation exercise will all be part of this.

 

A series of tactical drills for neutralizing potential threats will be planned, trained, and carried out jointly by both sides.

 

The soldiers will receive instruction on how to use cutting-edge technology and equipment in joint operations.

 

Regarding DUSTLIK

 

In 2019, the Chirchiq Training Area in Uzbekistan hosted the first joint field training exercise between India and Uzbekistan, dubbed “DUSTLIK-2019.” It centered on the exchange of knowledge regarding skills at arms and counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations (CI/CT Ops) in an urban setting.

 

In 2021, the exercise’s second iteration was held at the Foreign Training Node in Ranikhet, Uttarakhand; in 2022, the third iteration was held in Yangiarik, Uzbekistan.

3. Live Cross-Border UPI-PayNow Connectivity is Now Available in India and Singapore

Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, and Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, participated in the virtual launch of real-time payment linkage between India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore’s PayNow.

 

India and Singapore’s relationship has changed significantly as a result of the integration of PayNow and UPI.

 

The UPIPayNow link was launched by Ravi Menon, Managing Director (MD) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and Shaktikanta Das, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

 

The PayNow-UPI link is the first cross-border real-time payment system link in India and the second in Singapore.

 

The first nation to offer a cross-border person-to-person (P2P) payment service is Singapore.

International Affairs

1. The World’s First Comparison of Every State’s Physical Climate Risk in 2023 is the GDCR; 9 of the world’s 50 most important states are facing climate risk.

According to the Cross Dependency Initiative (XDI)’s “2023 Gross Domestic Climate Risk Assessment,” nine Indian states are among the world’s top 50 regions at risk of damaging the built environment as a result of climate change hazards.

 

The 9 states are Bihar (positioned 22), Uttar Pradesh (25th), Assam (28thg),

Rajasthan (32nd), Tamil Nadu (36th), Maharashtra (38th), Gujarat (44th), Punjab

(48th), and Kerala (50th).

 

The first physical climate risk analysis to compare every state, province, and territory in the world with a focus on the built environment is this Gross Domestic Climate Risk Report (GDCR).

 

Eighty per cent of the world’s top fifty most vulnerable cities and economic centres are located in the “globally significant states” of India, China, and the United States (US).

Banking and Finance

1. The Indian banking industry has benefited from mergers: RBI writing

According to an occasional paper published in Vol. 43, No. 1, titled “Do Bank Mergers Improve Efficiency?” in 2022 According to “The Indian Experience,” banking mergers in India have, on average, been beneficial to the banking sector because acquirers’ financial performance and efficiency improved after the merger.

 

The paper is created by Snehal S. Herwadkar, Shubham Gupta and

Vaishnavi Chavan, Chief, Branch of Financial and Strategy Exploration, RBI.

Since 1997, it has looked at how bank mergers in India affect the efficiency of the acquirers.

 

The authors’ opinions in the paper do not necessarily represent those of the Reserve Bank of India.

 

Assessment:

 

The data envelopment analysis (DEA) findings cover the years 1997 to 2017. Between 1997 and 2020, all registered mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the Indian commercial banking sector were included in the study.

 

The number of merger cases in the sample was reduced to 17 from 1997 to 2017 and to five from 2019 to 2020.

 

Key Points:

 

The majority of mergers between PVBs (private sector banks) were driven by the market, while mergers between PSBs (public sector banks) were led by the government.

 

The average technical efficiency of acquirers went up from 90.88 before the merger to 93.80 three years after the merger and 94.24 five years after the merger.

 

Post-merger geographical diversification and an increase in the share of interest income may have improved efficiency.

 

The effect was more honed in the medium term (- 3 to +5 years time frame) as looked at

to the present moment (- 1 to +1 years or – 3 to +3 years time span).

 

Banks were able to direct a larger portion of deposits and assets toward loans following the merger.

 

Post-merger, capital adequacy and NPA (Non Profit Asset) provisions measures have also improved because the combined entity is now somewhat more resistant to financial risks.

 

By consolidating ATMs and bank branches in the same area, for example, banks have been able to reduce operating expenses following mergers.

 

About India’s Reserve Bank (RBI):

 

In accordance with the RBI Act of 1934, the Reserve Bank of India was established on April 1, 1935.

 

The Reserve Bank’s Central Office was initially established in Calcutta, but in 1937, it was permanently relocated to Mumbai.

 

The Reserve Bank is wholly owned by the Indian government, despite the fact that it was initially owned privately until it was made a national bank in 1949.

2. SBI Dividend Yield Fund is launched by SBI Mutual Fund.

The SBI Dividend Yield Fund, an open-ended equity plan launched by SBI Mutual Fund, will invest at least 65% of its assets in equity and equity-related instruments, primarily dividend-paying businesses.

 

The new asset offer (NFO) is opened on February 20, 2023, and will close on Spring

6, 2023. The first-level benchmark of the asset is the Clever 500 TRI.

 

Objective:

 

To provide investors with opportunities for dividend distribution and/or capital appreciation

 

The fund will look for investment opportunities in businesses that have consistently demonstrated growth in their dividend payout, despite having a relatively low dividend yield at the moment.

 

It seeks to outperform the Nifty 50 Index by at least 50% in aggregate dividend yield.

 

The plan will take into account dividend-paying stocks that have either repurchased shares or paid dividends in at least one of the three previous fiscal years.

 

The SWP (A) facility in this fund can be used by investors who want regular income to plan regular tax-efficient cash flows.

 

The plan would allocate anywhere from 65 per cent to 100 per cent of its assets to dividend-yielding companies’ equity and equity-related instruments, up to 35 per cent to other equity and equity-related instruments, and up to 35 per cent to debt securities.

3. Mahabank Nakshatra, BoM’s own private cloud infrastructure, was launched.

To improve the performance of the cloud capabilities of the bank’s digital infrastructure and hosting applications, the Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) has launched its own private cloud infrastructure, Mahabank Nakshatra.

 

Through a predictive machine learning model, BoM’s own private cloud platform will strengthen the asset monitoring mechanism.

 

If a borrower account moves into a special mention account (SMA)-0 (principal or interest payment not overdue for more than 30 days), the Cloud platform will notify users in advance. As a result, the retail, agricultural, and MSME (Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises) portfolios’ potential stress accounts will be lessened by the prior alert.

 

BoM’s initiatives include:

 

In order to provide a seamless customer experience, the bank has upgraded the version of its mobile banking application with enhanced UI/UX features.

 

The bank launched a mobile app called Arjun, which stands for “Automated Remote Junction for Monitoring of Assets Under Stress.” Its purpose is to provide staff members and feat on street (FOT) with a snapshot of the portfolio’s stressed assets (SMAs and Slippages).

The app will also provide analysis and recovery recommendations to determine the daily variation in the stressed asset portfolio.

 

The bank sent off a legitimate case following programming named ‘Mykase’ to reinforce

Recuperation instrument. The software will retrieve all online cases in various Indian courts where BoM. iv. The bank used Digi locker to create the “pension slip facility,” which is a flagship Digital India initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY).

 

Customers will now be able to create a Standing Instruction (SI) facility for their FASTag wallet using the bank’s FASTag auto top-up facility.

 

Credit Card information, pension slips for pensioners, account statements, health insurance, and other information are now available through the bank’s WhatsApp banking service.

 

4. A Banking Portal for Kotak fyn was launched by Kotak Mahindra Bank.

To provide its business banking and corporate clients with inclusive digital banking and value-added services, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. (KMBL) launched an integrated banking portal known as “Kotak fyn.”

 

The Kotak fyn Portal’s features include:

 

Services for all products, including trade and services, account services, payments, and collections, will be offered through the portal.

 

It will enable self-service and drive operational efficiency by providing a single view of transactions, positions, and balances across multiple product-specific portals and back-office systems. 

 

It will also guarantee paperless transactions and eliminate the need for multiple logins and disparate user interfaces, making all trade and service transactions seamless and simple for customers.

 

The bank’s corporate customers will have a better banking experience thanks to the portal’s innovative user interface and a number of industry-leading features.

Economy and Business

1. According to SBI Ecowrap, India’s GDP growth in Q3-FY23 will be 4.6%.

According to the State Bank of India (SBI) Ecowrap research report, GDP growth in India is anticipated to be 4.6% in the third quarter of FY23.

For FY23, it is anticipated that GDP will expand between 6.8 and 7% annually.

 

Method of Estimation:

 

An in-house SBI Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model serves as the foundation for this estimation.

 

Artificial neural networks (ANNs), like biological neurons, are linked to one another in various layers of a computational network model called ANN.

Nodes are the names of these neurons.

 

The SBI ANN model has been trained on the quarterly GDP data from Q4 2011 to Q4 2020 using 30 high frequency indicators.

 

Key Points:

 

SBI’s Q3FY23 projection is higher than the 4.4% growth that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Statistical Office (NSO) anticipate.

 

India’s GDP increased by 0.7% and 5.4%, respectively, in the third quarter of FY21 and FY22.

 

The growth was estimated to be 13.5% in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, and it was 6.3% in the second quarter of the current fiscal year.

 

EBIDTA (earnings before interest, depreciation, tax, and amortization) declined by 9% year-over-year (y-o-y) in Q3 FY23, compared to 18% EBITDA growth in Q3 FY22, according to corporate results excluding BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance).

2. Bahrain Metro Rail Project: BEML and DMRC-led SPV signed an MoU.

On twentieth February 2023, BEML Limited(formerly Bharat Earth Movers Restricted), a

plan ‘A’ organization under the Service of Defence(MoD) marked an Update of

Grasping (MoU) with the Delhi Metro Rail Partnership (DMRC)- drove Extraordinary

Reason Vehicle (SPV) for developing the Bahrain Metro Rail Venture Stage 1.

A 30-kilometre (Km) Bahrain-based network with 20 stations is being built as part of the project.

 

Signatories:

 

In the presence of Vikas Kumar, the managing director (MD) of DMRC, and Amit Banerjee, the chairman and managing director (CMD) of BEML, Saleem Ahmed, executive director (last mile connectivity), Delhi Metro, and DS Ganesh, general manager (marketing), BEML, signed the memorandum of understanding.

 

Note:

 

The DMRC has been selected to participate in the international consultancy project’s pre-qualification tender process for the construction of the Bahrain Metro Project’s Phase I.

 

Specifics of the MoU:

 

BEML will manufacture and supply Metro rolling stock in accordance with this MoU, and DMRC will offer expertise in project development, budgeting, and facilitating contractual obligations for the Bahrain Metro Project’s first phase.

 

BEML will be able to use its manufacturing expertise and technological resources to expand globally and improve business processes for Metro Rolling Stock, which is used in urban transportation. This will be made possible by the MoU.

 

Other Delhi Metro projects include:

 

In the past, Delhi Metro was selected to participate in the pre-bid process for the Tel Aviv Metro Project in Israel.

 

It is also bidding on other projects around the world, such as Alexandria in Egypt, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and Mauritius.

 

As of right now, Delhi Metro is working as a consultant on the Dhaka Metro project in Bangladesh.