Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 19 July 2014

Special court to hear coal scam cases: SC

The Supreme Court decided to set up a special court to try cases arising from the coal block allocation scam and also appoint a special public prosecutor to lead the cases there.
The petitioner NGO common cause and CBI both accepted the name of Gopal Subramanium as the special prosecutor.
Court on Friday issued notice to seven private and public sector companies on central government’s plea seeking transfer, to apex court of all cases, challenging the cancellation of coal blocks allocated to them, pending before various high courts.

GEAC clears field trials for GM crops

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has given the green signal for field trials of genetically modified (GM) rice, mustard, cotton, chickpea and brinjal.
While the GEAC has approved the commercial release of Bt brinjal it has been stayed by the Ministry of Environment and Mr. Pande said the government would have to take a decision on this.
The only genetically modified crop approved for release in India is cotton.
Three companies - Bayer Bio Sciences, Monsanto and BASF have been allowed to import the Soyabean oil, which is genetically modified. The last time Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), gave a clean chit to imported samples.

UPSC issue figures in Rajya Sabha

The Government assured students agitating against the Civil Services Exam that no bias will be allowed on the basis of language and has asked the Committee looking into the grievances of students to expedite its report.
In response to governments appeal, the students on hunger strike ended their fast.
Civil Service aspirants held prolonged protests and resorted to hunger strike for several weeks demanding scrapping of Civil Services Aptitude Tests (CSAT), saying the exam pattern was putting Hindi and regional language aspirants at a disadvantage.

Poor healthcare ups private spending

The ninth edition of the National Health Profile, 2013, reveals that per capita private expenditure on health is three to four times higher than per capita public expenditure.
Funds flow to the health sector is maximum by private funds at 71. 62 per cent as per 2008-09 estimates, while public funds had accounted only for 26.70 per cent.
The report by the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says the expenditure on health has gone down from 4.3 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000 to 3.7 per cent in 2010.
Madhya Pradesh reported the maximum number of foeticide and infanticide cases, with Uttar Pradesh in the second position followed by Maharashtra.
Morbidity due to non-communicable diseases accounts for a large share of the disease burden in India. The number of cases of coronary heart disease was estimated to be nearly 3.6 crore for the year 2005, which is expected to reach 6.1 crore by 2015.
Medical education infrastructure has shown rapid growth in the last 20 years. There are 381 medical colleges and 19,817 hospitals with 6,28,708 beds in the country.

‘U.S., E.U. can’t be trusted on Bali package’

India said on Thursday that it no longer trusts the United States at the ongoing World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on the Bali package in Geneva.
Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to meet WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo, United States Trade Representative and the EU Trade Commissioner in Sydney at the G20 Summit in an attempt to find a solution to the gridlocked Bali Deal negotiations.
India is sticking to its ground in Geneva and refusing to support a Trade Facilitation Agreement [TFA] unless work starts on finding a permanent solution for its minimum support prices for procuring food from poor farmers for below poverty line Indians that are in danger of breaching the WTO caps on subsidies.

More steps will be taken to sustain economic recovery

Finance Minister said that there was “no contradiction in being pro-business and being pro-poor.” Only a spike in economic activity could create the resources “to service the poor” through social welfare programmes.
Mr. Jaitley outlined a road map for economic recovery through a stable tax regime, targeted subsidies for the poor and marginalised and using private investment to boost infrastructure and housing, foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence and insurance.
He said that new government has pushed for fiscal discipline than populism and it intended to rationalise subsidies so that they benefitted the poor, not the middle class through subsidies in the oil sector and education.

Contingent liabilities of states a cause for concern, says RBI paper

A working paper of the Reserve Bank of India titled ``Debt sustainability at the State level in India’’ sounded a warning that the contingent liabilities, primarily in the form of issuance of guarantees by the state governments, remained an area of concern.
Going forward, there could be downside risks in case the slowdown in growth momentum observed during the last two years persisted.
The debt position of state governments witnessed a significant improvement from 2004-05 onwards. This has been attributed, among others, to the implementation of of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Acts/Fiscal Responsibility Legislations (FRLs) at the state level in early 2000s.
Karnataka was the first to enact its FRBM Act in September 2002, followed by Kerala (2003), Tamil Nadu (2003) and Punjab (2003).
This was also supported by the implementation of Debt Swap Scheme (DSS) from 2002-03 to 2004-05 and Debt Consolidation and Relief Facility (DCRF) from 2005-06 to 2009-10. These two debt restructuring schemes provided debt relief through debt consolidation, and reduced the interest burden on the states.
These developments were mirrored in lower debt-GDP ratio at 26.6 per cent in end-March 2008, before declining further to 21.7 per cent in end-March 2013.

SEBI finalises draft norms for Infra Investment Trusts

The Securities and Exchange Board of India, came out with draft guidelines for Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs), which will enable creation of a new investment product for arranging long-term financing for infrastructure projects.
These InvITs can be listed on the stock exchanges, will get tax benefits and will invest the funds collected from investors in infrastructure projects, including PPP.
An InvIT prior to making an offer of units, either through public issue or private placement, may have strategic investors such as banks, international multilateral financial institutions, FPIs including sovereign wealth funds, which together invest not less than 5 per cent of the size of the InvIT or such amount as may be specified by Sebi.
The proposed holding of an InvIT in the underlying assets shall be not less than Rs.500 crore, and the offer size of the InvIT shall not be less then Rs.250 crore at the time of initial offer of units.
The aggregate consolidated borrowing of the InvIT and the underlying SPVs shall never exceed 49 per cent of the value of InvIT assets. Further, for any borrowing exceeding 25 per cent of the value of InvIT assets, requirement of credit rating and unit holders approval has been made mandatory.
InvITs would allow investors to invest in specific products linked to infrastructure projects, while providing necessary safeguards. Besides, it would help the corporates raise significant amounts of capital for their projects.
An InvIT which proposes to invest at least 80 per cent of the value of the assets in the completed and revenue generating infrastructure assets, The remaining 20 per cent may be invested in under construction infrastructure projects.

SEBI eases disclosure norms for AIFs

Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) are basically funds established, or incorporated in India, for the purpose of pooling in capital from Indian and foreign investors for investing as per a pre-decided policy.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India said that all AIF have to disclose the ‘disciplinary history’ of the fund, its sponsor, manager, directors, partners, promoters and associates for the last five years.
Further, SEBI said any change in placement memorandum (which consists of details of disciplinary actions of the funds) to all would be intimated to investors and to SEBI once every six months on a consolidated basis, as against the current practice of seven days.
Under SEBI guidelines, AIFs can operate broadly in three categories. The Category-I AIFs are those funds that get incentives from the government, SEBI or other regulators and include Social Venture Funds, Infrastructure Funds, Venture Capital Funds and SME Funds. The Category-III AIFs are those trading with a view to making short-term returns and it includes hedge funds, among others. The Category-II AIFs can invest anywhere in any combination but are prohibited from raising debt, except for meeting their day-to-day operational requirements. These AIFs include private equity funds, debt funds or fund of funds, as also all others falling outside the ambit of two other categories.