PepsiCo India on 3 March 2015 commissioned first phase of its largest beverage plant in which city of Andhra Pradesh in India?: Sri City
Explanation: The new plant will be the state-of-the-art plant which is company's most water efficient plant in the country. The plant will require a previously announced total investment of over Rs 1,200 crore, a re-enforcement of PepsiCo’s long-term commitment to India thus now this new plant will manufacture a range of beverages, including fruit juice-based drinks, carbonated soft drinks, and sports drinks. When fully operational it will have nine production lines. In this plant of PepsiCo, a quarter of all employees of its Sri City facility will be women, making it one of the most gender diverse plants in India.
Seeking to improve its image as a customer friendly organisation, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has decided to set up a dedicated wing to have a better connect with taxpayers. Thus CBEC is celebrating year 2015 as what?: Year of Taxpayer Services in "recognition of the need to have 'customer focus' in our day-to-day functioning"
Explanation: CBEC is responsible for collection of indirect taxes -- Customs duty, excise and service tax. The Board has decided to set up a "Directorate of Taxpayer Services" in pursuance of the recommendations of the Tax Administration Reforms Commission (TARC), headed by Parthasarathi Shome. TARC, in its first report submitted to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, had stressed on 'customer focus' and recommended creation of the Directorate for Taxpayers. The target for Customs duty and excise collection for the current fiscal is Rs 2.08 lakh crore and Rs 2.29 lakh crore, respectively, while the corresponding figure for service tax stands at Rs 2.09 lakh crore. The collection of indirect taxes in 2014-15 had surpassed the target of Rs 5.46 lakh crore by Rs 4,000 crore.
Which Indian state has received an-all time high financing of Rs 7,678 crore from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) during 2014-15, with agriculture loans accounting for over Rs 5,300 crore ?: Kerala
Explanation: An aggregate amount of Rs 5,348 crore was disbursed as agriculture loans to the Kerala State Cooperative Bank, Kerala State Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Bank and Kerala Gramin Bank to support their lending operations to farmers. 1,200 crore was sanctioned from the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund. In an effort to strengthen the cooperative Credit structure, the primary agriculture co-operatives societies were sanctioned Rs 25 crore for diversifying their business portfolio. The bank, as a pilot initiative, had extended Rs 10 crore to Primary cooperative Banks for lending to the rural housing sector.
Global airlines body IATA notified on 2 April 2015 that which country’s Domestic air travel demand surged the highest in worldwide, partly on the back of airlines keeping ticket prices lower to stimulate market in lean travel season,?: India by 14.8 percent in February
Explanation: The strongest growth occurred in India and Brazil, followed by China, which benefitted from Lunar New Year-related travel and thus the overall global demand rose 6.2 percent in February 2015 over the same month last year with international demand up by 6.8 percent while domestic demand seeing a growth of 5.3 percent in the reporting month. According to IATA estimates, nearly nine million people travel on 1,00,000 flights, which flies criss-cross the global skies on an average day.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 1 April 2015 inaugurated the second modernization project of which plant in Odisha?: Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP)
Explanation: The 4.5 million tonne modernization project of RSP of the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has been built with an expenditure of about Rs 12,000 crore. Rourkela Steel Plant plays a key role in the nation's defence as well as stated by the prime Minister of India in his speech where he had also referred that India surpasses the America in terms of Steel production but still behind of China.
The Cabinet on 31 March 2015 gave a go-ahead to the proposal to sign an inter-governmental agreement on Dry Ports of International Importance. What was the motive behind of this go ahead?: A move aimed at promoting global trade
Explanation: The agreement promotes international recognition of dry ports, facilitates investment in infrastructure and improves operational efficiency of inter modal transport services and also establishes guiding principles for development and operation of dry ports and enhances the environmental sustainability of freight transport. Thus the agreement will help in connectivity and integration of the Asian highway network, the trans-Asian railways network and other modes by working towards development of dry ports. The agreement will also lead to strengthening of connectivity and seamless international movement of goods, facilitate increased efficiency and reduce cost of transport and logistics as well as extend reach to inland areas and wider hinterlands.
SIDBI on 31 March 2015 signed USD 543 million (about Rs 3,400 crore) pacts with which bank for two projects to provide debt assistance to start-ups, MSMEs and promote energy efficiency investments in the country?: World Bank
Explanation: It will be new beginning in the area of MSME financing and supplement the Government's thrust on Make in India and Zero Defect Zero Effect Programme. The first agreement on MSME growth, innovation and inclusive finance project is for line of credit of USD 500 million to Small Industries Development Bank of India. Thus it will be divided into 2 parts:
- USD 150 million will be used for spurring early stage risk capital finance
- USD 200 million for supporting service sector enterprises
- USD 150 million will be utilised for financing of manufacturing MSMEs
The second agreement is for Partial Risk Sharing Facility for Energy Efficiency (PRSF) Project with a total outlay of USD 43 million. Under this pact, it will be part into 3:
- A guarantee fund with a corpus of USD 37 million will be managed by SIDBI.
- Technical assistance of a USD 4 million to be implemented by SIDBI.
- USD 2 million to be implemented by Energy Efficiency Services Limited.
The project also targets women entrepreneurs (20 percent of the project) and units in underserved (low income) states such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (25 percent of assisted units from low income states).
Government on 30 March 2015 has made it mandatory for domestic fertiliser firms to "neem coat" at least 75 percent of their urea production, a move that is likely to save how much under the subsidy outgo?: Rs 6,500 crore
Explanation: Removing the cap on neem coating of urea in January this year, and allowing fertiliser firms to coat the 100 percent of urea produced by them with neem will help more yield to about 15-20 percent and with less use of urea about nearly 15-20 percent. Urea is excessive used as it is highly subsidised and its retail price of urea is fixed at Rs 5,360 per tonne. Therefore farmers use it even in place of other partially decontrolled NPK fertilizers thus causing huge pollution in the soil as the soil health is deteriorating because of excessive use of urea and it has disturbed the ideal N (nitrogen) P (phosphorus) and K (potash) ratio of 4:2:1. The neem coated urea also works as insecticide and it will cost just 5 percent more than the cost of normal urea which is about Rs 260 per tonne and about Rs 10 per bag.
SEBI on 30 March 2015 directed that when Municipalities proposing to issue and list municipal bonds then they can't indulge in which kind of activity under the garb of 'promotional or educational' activities at time of raising funds from investors and they will have to follow a strict disclosure regime.?: Pseudo advertising
Explanation: The SEBI has finalized the norms in view to safeguards in the interest of investors, while some of the disclosure requirements are even tougher than in developed markets like the US. Thus, new norms are expected to give a major boost to the government's initiative of setting up 100 smart cities in the country, as they will allow the urban local bodies to raise much-needed funds, from public investors as also from large institutions, including pension funds, for infrastructure building exercise in their respective areas. Also the new norms will provide that the issuer should/may make an advertisement in a national daily with wide circulation on or before the issue opening date and such advertisement will have to contain extensive disclosures and have to adhere with the guidelines like:
-No issuer can "issue an advertisement which is misleading (in) material particulars or which contains any information in a distorted manner or which is manipulative or deceptive. The advertisement shall be truthful, fair and clear and shall not contain a statement, promise or forecast which is untrue or misleading.
-Any advertisement issued by the issuer shall not contain any matters which are extraneous to the contents of the offer document. The advertisement shall urge the investors to invest only on the basis of information contained in the offer document.
-Any promotional or educative advertisement issued by the issuer during the subscription period shall not make any reference to the issue of debt securities or be used for solicitation.
Farmers in tribal states are joining hands to form corporate structures as the Narendra Modi government's 'Farm to Fork' programme begins a quiet rollout even as the much-criticised APMC law is yet to be exorcised. The company forming is as part of the plan being implemented by which entity, which is also now as the country's largest development lender?: National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development
Explanation: Over 2,000 farmer organizations in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana will be incubated to grow into a cooperative society, trust and ultimately to a company. Therefore, under this programme government division had identified over 300 farmer groups where they will hand-holding them and helping with registrations and business process re-engineering to facilitate their take off that means these organizations will get help at each level like from sourcing of inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides to machine requirements for management of farms, processing of produce, marketing and linking up with large value chains. Nabard will use a Rs 200 crore fund set up by the government to provide initial-stage funding besides additional money through its NBFC arm. The bank funded 44 lakh self-help groups through a programme called e-Shakti. The pilot digitisation project was started in Ramgarh district of Jharkhand.
