According to RBI data, total FDI inflow in to India stood at USD 37.36 billion in 2017-18 financial year.
It is a marginal rise over the USD 36.31 billion recorded in the previous fiscal.
Mauritius remained the top source of foreign direct investment (FDI) into India in 2017-18 followed by Singapore.
FDI in Manufacturing sector witnessed a substantial decline, whereas in Communication services, retail and wholesale trade, financial services sector witnessed a rise.
These data reflect the global interest in new areas, including online marketplaces and financial technologies.
Report on Pollution
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based think tank has released a report titled “The urban Commute”.
The report collected statistics from 14 cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Kochi, Bhopal, Vijayawada and Chandigarh.
According to the report, Bhopal has got the top spot for lowest overall emission and energy use from urban commute.
On the other hand, Delhi ranked last in overall emission and fuel use.
Kolkata and Mumbai are among the mega cities which emit least due to high usage of public transport and walking.
The reason attributed for this is sheer number of people, high volume of travel and personal vehicles, and long trip distance.
The report also highlighted that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from transport sector were highest among all other sectors in India.
India Post Payment Bank
India Post Payment Bank (IPPB) was recently launched with an intention to make banking facility available at the doorstep of citizens and leverage the workforce of 300,000 postmen.
It will be a 100% government owned entity.
It will act as a bank, allowing accounts to be opened.
A customer can make deposits into the account but the total amount is limited to Rs 1 lakh.
Amounts deposited in excess of Rs 1 lakh will get automatically transferred to the savings bank account.
Other normal services offered by banks like payments and remittance services, mobile payments, transfers, purchases, ATM cards, net banking and third-party fund transfers will all be made available.
It can issue debit cards but not credit cards.
However, it cannot lend loans to customers.
The interest on the IPPB savings account will be the same as what the banks offer, which is 4% per annum.
EAS-EMM
East Asia Summit - Economic Ministers’ Meeting (EAS-EMM) was recently held in Singapore.
The meeting was attended by Economic Ministers from 10 ASEAN countries and their eight dialogue partners.
Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam are ASEAN members.
The dialogue partners are Australia, China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, the Russian Federation and the United States of America.
It was followed by the 15th ASEAN Economic Ministers - India Consultation.
Department of Official Language
It is under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Union Home Minister has recently chaired the first review meeting of the Department of Official Language.
The officials discussed the functioning and issues related to implementation of Hindi language in official work.
An E-learning platform called the “Pravah” is being developed by the department for use in 16 Indian languages including English.
It will enable anybody learn Hindi through his/her mother tongue with the help of this E-learning platform.
A software called “Kanthasth” has also been developed by the department.
It is for translating the all kinds of official files from English to Hindi and vice versa to make the translation work simpler and quicker.
