Table of Contents
Scrutiny of imports
- India to increase scrutiny of imports from China or Chinese companies located in ASEAN.
- China is setting up shell entities to in ASEAN nations.
- India has FTA with ASEAN.
- India’s imports from Asean rose 26% in FY19 against a 10% overall increase.
- GoI has alerted industries and importers.
- Stringent checks of country of origin certificates.
- Two-pronged strategy: fewer imports and greater domestic capability.
FMCG Cos
- Consumption growth in rural India is rising.
- 85% of pre-Covid average
- Reasons: underpinned by higher farm income, minimal retail disruption during the lockdown and migrant workers returning home.
- Urban market sales: at 70%
- More than half a dozen consumer goods companies are expecting rural demand to drive the bulk of their growth during the fiscal year.
- Rural hinterland, home to more than 800 million people.
Farmer Database
- Aadhaar-based database for farmers.
- Centre’s plan: digitise all its farm-oriented schemes and ensure farmers are paid procurement prices directly.
- 1st phase: 50 million farmers across 9 states.
- 30 June deadline.
- Satellite imagining of individiual farm land.
- Database may be shared with farm technology companies for developing innovative solutions to increase productivity.
Supervisory move on co-op banks
- UCBs played pivotal role in spreading reach of formal finance to the unbanked.
- State Govts. were not ready to give up their control over UCBs.
- UCBs were considered too small to create any systemic hard.
- But due to poor corporate governance and inability to detect frauds, many depositors were at risk.
- Ordinance to empower RBI to supervise urban cooperative banks.
- Market Share of UCBs
- FY02: 6.4%
- FY17: 3.3%
- Joint regulation with State Govt made job for RBI harder.
- Now RBI will oversee UCBs.
- RBI should deploy smart technology to keep an eye on UCBs.
- AI will allow the supervisor to see patterns in interconnected transactions among multiple banks and shadow banks that today escape scrutiny.
- Malegam Committee + R Gandhi panel recommendations: a board of management in cooperative banks must be delegated powers similar to what commercial banks have given to their boards of directors.
Locust Fight
- Department of Agriculture is hunting for
- Drones that can fly at night
- Stay airborne for an extended duration
- This is to fight off locust swarms that have invaded western and central India.
- Civil aviation regulator granted the agriculture ministry conditional exemption to use drones in anti-locust operation.
- Rajasthan: desert locusts will migrate to over the next few weeks to breed and lay their eggs.
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