Category: Economics Current Affairs

World Bank Doing Business Report: The World Bank, in mid-September, announced that it was set to discontinue publishing its Doing Business report. This announcement came on the back of an independent investigation that, reportedly, found “data irregularities” that prevailed in the 2018 and 2020 reports. In August 2020, World Bank paused the publication of Doing […]

Asset Ownership: An analysis of asset ownership data at the household level collected by Lokniti-CSDS during its National Election Study in 2019 was recently released. Gauging who can afford the five assets of a car, an air-conditioner at home, a desktop or laptop computer, a refrigerator, and a television set, has been seen as an […]

Unity Small Finance Bank: The Reserve Bank of India issued a small finance bank (SFB) licence to a consortium of fintech company BharatPe and Centrum Financial Services Ltd. The new business entity “Unity Small Finance Bank” will see Centrum’s MSME and micro finance businesses merged into itself. In a statement, Centrum Group’s Executive Chairman Jaspal […]

Climate Resilience Information System And Planning (CRISP-M) Tool: Union Minister of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj jointly launched Climate Resilience Information System and Planning (CRISP-M) tool for integration of climate information in Geographic Information System (GIS) based watershed planning under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA The CRISP-M tool will help embed climate information in the GIS based […]

6th Ministerial (2021) Meeting Of The Conference On Interaction And Confidence-Building Measures (CICA): The External Affairs Minister addressed the 6th Ministerial (2021) meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures (CICA) in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Last year, Kazakhstan assumed the chairmanship of CICA. The 5th Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the CICA […]

Draft Regional Plan 2041: The National Capital Region Planning Board (NCRPB) has recently approved the ‘Draft Regional Plan 2041’ according to which the National Capital Region (NCR) is likely to reduce in size. NCRPB was set up in 1985, to promote balanced development of the NCR and to avoid haphazard development The geographical size of […]

Global Minimum Tax Deal: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has announced that a global deal to ensure big companies pay a Global Minimum Tax (GMT) rate of 15% has been agreed by 136 countries (including India). The countries behind the accord together accounted for over 90% of the global economy. GMT is […]

National Green Tribunal: The Supreme Court has declared the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT) position as a “unique” forum endowed with suo motu powers to take up environmental issues across the country. The court said the NGT need not wait for the “metaphorical Godot” to knock on its portal to flex its considerable muscles to save […]

Air India: After 68 years, Air India is all set to return to the Tata fold. Tata Sons subsidiary Talace Pvt. Ltd. emerged as the winning bidder for the debt-laden national carrier after quoting an enterprise value of ₹18,000 crore. The government will take a hit of ₹28,844 crore. The Tatas will own a 100% […]

Market Based Economic Despatch (MBED): Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) has released the Framework for Implementation of Market Based Economic Despatch (MBED) – Phase1 for lowering the cost of power purchase to Consumers. Implementing an Market Based Economic Despatch (MBED) is an essential next step in reforming electricity market operations and in moving towards “One […]