Economics/Business

Tags: Economics/Business

1. Contribution of Manufacturing of MSME sector

In a statement to the Rajya Sabha the Union Minister for Micro Small and Medium Enterprise(MSME) Narayan Rane gave information about the contribution of the MSME sector in Indian Economy:

• The  share of the MSME manufacturing in All India manufacturing gross value output during the year 2018-19 and 2019-20 were 36.9% and 36.9% respectively.
• The share of export of specified MSME related products to All India exports during 2019-20 and 2020-21 was 49.8% and 49.4% respectively.

2. City Union Bank Launches payment keychain “On the Go”

• Private sector lender City Union Bank (CUB), in collaboration with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and manufacturing partner Seshaasai, has unveiled ‘On-the-Go’ contactless wearable keychains for debit cards.
• The device would enable customers to make fast payments up to ₹5,000 in all RuPay enabled point-of-sale devices without entering a PIN,
• For payments above ₹5,000, customers would need to tap and then enter the PIN.

Headquarters of City Union Bank :Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu.

3. RBI to extend UPI to feature ­phone users

The UPI facility will soon be extended to feature phone users. At the moment, the unified payments interface (UPI) — the single largest retail payments system in the country in terms of volume of transactions for small value payments — is available only for smartphones.

• It will help to further deepen digital payments and make them more inclusive, ease transactions for consumers, facilitate greater participation of retail customers in various segments of financial markets and to enhance the capacity of service providers.
• This will be done by leveraging innovative products from the RBI’s regulatory sandbox on retail payments.

4. RBI to mop up surplus liquidity as it ‘rebalances

The monetary policy panel of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to increase the amount of money absorbed through variable-rate reverse repo (VRRR) auctions.

• Variable-rate reverse repo (VRRR)is a tool used by RBI to absorb excess liquidity from the banking system. Since Jan 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been taking out about ₹2 lakh crore from the banking system every two weeks. It has now decided to increase that figure substantially by around 14 Lakh Crore by the next two fortnights till the end of December 2021.

5. Paytm Payments Bank gets ‘scheduled bank’ status from RBI

• Reserve Bank of India(RBI) has included “Paytm Payments Bank Limited”, a subsidiary of One97 Communications, in the Second Schedule to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.
• As per RBI Act 1934, banks satisfying the RBI that its affairs are not being conducted in a manner detrimental to the interests of its depositors, are included in the second schedule.

6. Imports made up 86% of India's gold supply between 2016-2020: WGC

According to the   World Gold Council(WGC)’s ‘Bullion Trade in India’ report:

• Imports made up 86% of India’s gold supply between 2016-2020, and inbound shipments continue to grow despite high import duty.
• In 2020, India imported 377 tonnes of gold bars and dore from over 30 countries, of which 55% came from just two countries — Switzerland (44%) and the UAE (11%).