Daily Financial News Analysis – 29th August’20

Table of Contents

GST Compensation

The Banks Board Bureau on Friday recommended Dinesh Khara for the position of chairman at State Bank of India.
The name will now be put up before the Prime Minister-headed Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) for approval.
This is Khara’s second shot at the top job.
In 2017, he was interviewed alongside the current chairman.
The 59-year-old currently looks after SBI’s global banking and subsidiaries business.
He is considered to be the “merger” man — having overseen more than a dozen bank mergers in a career spanning over 35 years.

Senior government officials: A change in TikTok’s ownership may not be enough to persuade the Indian government to lift the ban on the app.
The problem with the app was not only the ownership.
TikTok was reflecting selective views, snooping on Indian citizens and significantly controlling the information viewed by Indians in a way that was leading to mind control
“Did you ever see clips on the Hong Kong protests or on the Dalai Lama and Tibetans in exile? So, you could see how it was trying to feed selective information.”
A Microsoft-Walmart combine is among contenders seeking to acquire TikTok.

World Bank decided to pause publication of Doing Business report this year and review some previous reports due to data irregularities.
India’s rank may not get impacted.
India will continue with the processes and reforms required to simplify doing business.

India did reforms to change ground reality and not just ranking.
The centre even launched a ranking of the states on ease of doing business as the measures taken are only to the advantage of the citizens.
Doing Business 2018 and Doing Business 2020 reports, published in October 2017 and 2019.

India can become a “true global superpower” in the fight against climate change if it “speeds up” its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. – United Nation Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Clean energy is the “ticket to growth and prosperity”
Health and economic costs of persisting with coal, and warned that 50% of the country’s coal will be uncompetitive in 2022, reaching 85% by 2025.
Guterres, however, acknowledged India’s sizeable renewable energy programme, the target of 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, and investment in solar surpassing that on coal power plants.
The UN chief had last month made a similar call to the Chinese government in an address to Tsinghua University in Beijing where also he had focused on the pitfalls of investing in coal.
Navroz Dubash, professor at Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, said the momentum towards renewable energy, away from coal, is considerable in the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that PM Jan Dhan Yojana has been a game-changer.
Landmark world’s largest financial inclusion plan completed 6 years.
The government said that the plan has added over 40 crore PMJDY accounts so far.
Out of the total accounts, 63.6 per cent were from rural areas and 55.2 per cent belonged to the women beneficiaries.
The initiative, which offered zero minimum balance requirement and easy KYC facility, was launched in August 2014.
It attracted 17.9 crore people in the first year.