The report is a jointly published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
This year report marks the 70th anniversary of the publication.
It is the flagship report on the state of global economy.
The report highlights that, global economic growth reached 3 per cent in 2017, the highest growth rate since 2011.
It states that, India is set to see the growth accelerating to 7.2% in 2018-19 and 7.4% in 2019-20, up from the 6.7% in 2017-18.
UN-DESA
UN-DESA is based at UN Headquarters in New York.
It is an entity of the UN Secretariat responsible for economic, social and environmental issues.
It promotes international cooperation in the pursuit of sustainable development.
It helps countries individually and regionally to formulate and implement national development strategies.
Its in-depth policy analysis has helped resolve many of the world’s most pressing socio-economic issues.
It publishes “Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017”, which is the annual assessment of global and regional progress towards the Goals.
UNCTAD
It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and part of the UN Secretariat.
It is a part of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG).
It was formed specifically to handle the problems of developing countries dealing with trade, investment and development issues.
Other reports published by UNCTAD – Trade and Development Report, World Investment Report, The Least Developed Countries Report, Information and Economy Report, Technology and Innovation Report and Commodities and Development Report.
Laqshya Initiative
Government of India has recently launched Laqshya -Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative.
Its objective is to reduce preventable maternal and new-born mortality, morbidity and stillbirths by improving the quality of care provided in the labour room.
It will be implemented in Government Medical Colleges besides District Hospitals, and Sub- District Hospitals and Community Health Centres.
The initiative plans to conduct quality certification of labour rooms and also incentivize facilities achieving the targets outlined.
First NIC-CERT
National Informatics Centre (NIC) provides nationwide common ICT infrastructure consisting of national and state “Data Centres” to support e-Governance services to the citizen.
National Knowledge Network (NKN) has been set up to connect institutions/organizations carrying out R&D, Higher Education and Governance with speed of the order of multi Gigabits per second.
Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
It has been designated to serve as the national agency to collect, analyse and disseminate information on cyber incidents.
Country’s first NIC-CERT has been recently setup that will monitor, detect and prevent cyber attacks on government networks
It uses various tools to gather intelligence to identify vulnerabilities and possible exploits thereby predicting cyber incidents.
Ranganadi Hydroelectric Dam
It is the Run-of-the-River (ROR) dam constructed on Ranganadi River in Arunachal Pradesh.
ROR is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided.
Substantial flooding of the upper part of the river is not required for run-of-river projects as a large reservoir is not required.
It does not require the formation of a reservoir thus eliminating the methane and carbon dioxide emissions.
The Emissions are generally caused by the decomposition of organic matter in the reservoir of a conventional hydro-electric dam.
Methanol blending with Petrol
It is a liquid chemical which is made from the destructive distillation (pyrolysis) of wood and is chiefly synthesized from carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
Its principal uses are in organic synthesis, as a fuel, solvent, and antifreeze.
It is also used to produce biodiesel via transesterification reaction.
Government will soon announce a policy which calls for 15 per cent blending of methanol in petrol to make it cheaper and also reduce pollution.
