Banking and Financial Awareness December 2019: Week II

ICAR and NABARD signs an MoU

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has signed an MoU with the National Board of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) to make the action research and up-scaling of the various technologies and innovative farmer models easier.
The MoU was signed in New Delhi between the Secretary (DARE) & Director General (ICAR) Dr Trilochan Mohapatra and the Chairman of NABARD, Harsh Kumar Bhanwala.
The MoU is basically aimed at taking up the site-specific transfer of technologies under the integrated farming system, sustainable agriculture, agro-forestry, animal sciences, etc., including post-harvest technologies.

The Reserve Bank of India has announced to provide an intraday liquidity (IDL) window or facility for the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) transactions.
This facility will help in the smooth operation of the NEFT system on a 24×7 basis.
All the banks will be eligible for this facility. However, the time limit for such a facility will be set by the RBI from time to time.
This liquidity adjustment facility will be beneficial for settlement purposes and will also reduce the pressure of the banks.

Edelweiss Asset Management Company (AMC) has launched the 1st Corporate Bond Exchange Trade Fund (ETF) of India. It is called as the Bharat Bond ETF.
Edelweiss AMC is a subsidiary of Edelweiss Capital Limited (ECL).
Edelweiss said that it aims to raise an initial amount of Rs 3,000 crore through this bond from institutional players with a greenshoe option of Rs 2,000 crore in a maturity period of 3-year (2023).
It also aims to raise the amount of Rs 4,000 crore with a greenshoe option of Rs 6,000 crore in a maturity period of 10-year (2030).

American multinational financial services corporation Mastercard has tied-up with private sector Federal bank to provide an additional layer of security function for digital transactions done by cardholders of the bank. This facility is called ‘Mastercard Identity Check’.
This new security function will be provided by using EMV 3-D Secure (3DS). This security function will provide an easy and safe way to authenticate cardholders without using passwords.
EMV 3-D Secure is a messaging protocol that will promote easy consumer authentication and will allow the consumers to authenticate themselves with their card issuer while making purchases without card or card-not-present (CNP) e-commerce purchases.

American credit rating agency, Moody’s Investors Service has lowered the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast of India for the year 2019 to 5.6%.
This is very less from the growth forecast of 7.4% in 2018.
This forecast has been done in the Global Macro Outlook 2020-21 of Moody's.
The major cause of lowering the growth forecast is the slow growth rate of employment.
Moody's has also projected that India's GDP growth may improve later and become 6.6 % and 6.7 % in 2020 and 2021 respectively.

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has lowered the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast of India for the financial year 2019-20 to 5.1% from 6.5% projected earlier.
ADB projected earlier in September 2019 that India's GDP growth will be 6.5% in 2019-20 and 7.2% in 2020-21.

The Ministry of Labour and Employment released an information regarding loans sanctioned under MUDRA Yojana.
According to the ministry, loans of an amount of Rs. 10.24 lakh crore have been sanctioned under the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY) as on November 1, 2019.
Also, these loans were sanctioned to 20.84 crore account holders.
MUDRA Yojana was by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 8, 2015.

National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) has signed an MoU with Saudi Aramco (Asia) for the development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in India in the Oil & Gas Sector.
The MoU will help the Indian MSMEs to make place as vendors in the Global space.
NSIC is a Mini Ratna PSU that works under the Ministry of MSME.
Saudi Aramco is a Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural gas company.

National Thermal Power Corporation Limited has signed a term loan agreement for Rs. 5,000 crore with State Bank of India.
This loan facility by SBI has been extended at an interest rate linked to 3-month MCLR (Marginal Cost of Funds based Lending Rate) of the bank.
Additionally, the loan facility has a door-to-door tenure of 15 years.

Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) has provided a Line of Credit of $500 million (Rs 3561 crore) to Bangladesh for defence-related procurement.
The agreement was signed with Bangladesh's Armed Forces Division.
Under the loan agreement, financing of export of eligible goods and services from India would be allowed subject to the Foreign Trade Policy (FTP).