Business & Finance - Current Affairs for August, 2015

This move will help customers raise the eligible amount by up to 20 percent and increase the tenure by up to seven years. It will expand the credit amount and increase the tenure upto 67 years of age for an additional fee as well.

The Centre for Development of Telematics is an Indian Government owned telecommunications technology development centre. It was established in 1984 with initial mandate of designing and developing digital exchanges.

On 24th Aug’15 Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu released the micro planning development project details prepared by Tata Trust aimed at developing 264 villages in the Vijayawada Lok Sabha Constituency which it has adopted under Corporate Social Responsibility.

The proposed 41-km Amlekhgunj-Raxaul pipeline is expected to ease transportation of fuel and eliminate the country’s dependence on oil tankers. Under the first phase of the project, a pipeline will be laid from Raxaul to Amlekhgunj, and under the second phase, it will be extended to Kathmandu. Re-engineering of the Amlekhgunj depot and allied facilities are among the packages of the project.

Following the agreement, two separate agreements, business-to-business and modus operandi (operation modality), will also be signed between sole supplier Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC).

Bandhan is the first micro-finance company to transform into a bank. Reserve Bank of India has turned liberal in doling out banking licenses to entities of different capabilities. It has just issued 11 in-principle licenses to set up payments banks. Bandhan Bank will primarily cater to the unorganized sector like daily wage earners and women running small businesses -- the segments that had been its borrowers for a decade. As a bank, it will also offer savings, remittance and insurance services and try to raise its stake in the bottom of the pyramid customers.

It can fetch about 9,500 crore rupees to the exchequer. The floor price for the share will be announced on 22nd Aug’15 and the Offer for Sale will take place on 24th Aug’15. Presently, the government holds 68.57 percent shares in IOC, the biggest oil refining and marketing company in the country. The stake sale in IOC will be the fourth disinvestment this fiscal. The earlier 3 stake sales had raised over 3,000 crore rupees. The government is targeting to raise 69,500 crore rupees from disinvestment in the current fiscal.

The deal makes IndiGo the largest airline customer for the Airbus A320-family of aircraft. It is the largest ever order in terms of volume by any company.

The bank launched contactless multi-currency forex cards in partnership with Visa - the payments gateway company. Axis Bank would be the first bank to issue multi-currency contactless cards or 'tap and pay' cards which can be loaded in 15 currencies such as Swiss Franc and Hong Kong dollar besides the three main currencies - US dollar, Euro and British Pound.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India Member Nilesh Sathe announced that the decision will not be binding on banks who are free to take their call.

FbStart is a programme launched last year to help early-stage mobile start-ups build and grow their applications. Under this, Facebook runs two tracks called ‘Accelerate companies’ and ‘Bootstrap companies’ and for which it will provide software and tools worth 80,000 dollars and 30,000 dollars respectively to developers.

He replaced Sachin Tendulkar whose contract ended in last year.

According to data released by the Central Statistics Office, the manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 75 percent of the IIP, grew at 4.6 percent in June this year. But output of capital goods, a barometer of investment, contracted 3.6 percent, and mining sector output fell 0.3 per cent during the month. Power generation growth stood at 1.3 percent in June.

Google has a new owner: a holding company called Alphabet, run by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Alphabet owns a few other things, too: namely, every company ever created or acquired under the tech giant’s many-tentacled purview.

The Gross Non-performing Assets as a percentage of total advances increased to 7.3 percent during June quarter, from 4.3 percent in the same period last fiscal. Net non-performing assets also rose to 4.5 percent against 2.3 percent during the same quarter last year.

The directive issued on 7th Aug’15 mandates telecom operators to provide toll free number '1925' from September 1 to activate or deactivate mobile internet service either by making a call on the number and following instruction or by sending a SMS. The new directive from TRAI follows a large number of complaints from customers that mobile operators are keeping the process of deactivation very complex to earn extra revenue. The new amendment issued in Telecom Consumers Protection Regulations directs telecom operators not to charge subscribers for usage beyond subscribed limit without their explicit consent.

Foxconn manufactures gadgets for world’s leading electronic brands like Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, BlackBerry and Motorola. This is second major coup for Maharashtra in the past fortnight. On 30 July, General Motors announced an investment of Rs.6,400 crore in the state. This investment will generate 50,000 direct jobs and the Foxconn plant is most likely to come up at Talegaon in Pune district along the Pune-Mumbai expressway on 1,500 acres of land.

On 6th Aug’15 Bharti Airtel launched pan-India 4G high-speed data services in 296 towns across India and it will be available to customers through 4G-enabled mobile phones, internet dongles and Wi-Fi routers.

This will help BSNL to realign its structure in the highly competitive telecom sector. It will also help the public sector company to unlock its tower assets and improve its financial position.

This is the second phase of the signing of Sustaining Competitive and Responsible Enterprises (SCORE) Global Programme, wherein national institutes provide training to MSMEs. In line with the objective of SCORE, ILO is entrusted with building capacity of FICCI in three phases to enable the industry body to effectively coordinate and manage SCORE training services.

Life Insurance Corporation has agreed to provide funds to the tune of Rs 1.50 lakh crore to Railways for five years for infrastructure development.

The umbrella company in east China's Jiangxi Province set the new record for creating the world's largest umbrella by unveiling an umbrella of around 23 meters in diameter and 14.4 meters in height. According to the website of Guinness World Records, the largest umbrella measures 17.06 m (56 ft) in diameter and is 10.97 m (36 ft) tall and was made by Max New York Life Insurance (India).

The UK based company Pangaea Laboratories Limited had filed patent application at European Patent office in February, 2011 on a medicinal composition containing turmeric, pine bark and green tea for treating hair loss. An official release said in New Delhi that the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a Unit of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research filed pre-grant opposition along with prior-art evidences. It proved that turmeric, pine bark and green tea, are being used as a treatment for hair loss, since long in Indian systems of medicine like Ayurveda and Unani. Till date CSIR-TKDL has achieved success in about 200 such cases without any cost.

These 10 companies are HDFC Bank, TCS, HCL Tech, Aurobindo Pharma, Lupin, Sun Pharma, Motherson Sumi Systems, Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors and Titan.