News Roundup - 28 November 2014

• France to process tourist and business visas within two days of application from December 1. Currently visas take five to 10 days. A mobile application — ‘Chalo Paris’ — was also launched. Eight new visa application centres at Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Pune, Panjim, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Hyderabad and Jaipur would also be opened from December 1.
• Union government rolled out the much-awaited electronic visa system for visitors from 43 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan and Russia. The implementation of Tourist Visa on Arrival enabled with electronic travel authorisation will send a clear and powerful message that India is serious in making travel to the country easy. A tourist from these countries can now apply for an e-visa through the designated website and pay the fee online to get an electronic travel authorisation within 72 hours. The facility will be available initially at nine airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad and Goa. It will be extended to citizens of more countries soon. An e-visa will be valid for 30 days and a tourist can take it twice a year.
• P D James, author of classic British Detective stories, died.
• Of the 7.64 crore bank accounts opened under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) so far, 5.74 crore have no deposits. A total of Rs. 6,015 crore is held in the remaining 1.9 crore accounts. Thus, the average deposit in each of these is Rs. 3165.78. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has raised the target for opening of PMJDY bank accounts by the next Republic Day to 10 crore, according to an official release. The new target will amount to opening of one account for each household in the country. The target was originally set at 7.5 crore bank accounts. The Finance Minister also asked the officers that Aadhar card numbers may be seeded with bank accounts so that the subsidies payments can be made into them through the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, the release said.
• West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi was on Thursday sworn in as the Governor of Bihar. The term of the former Bihar Governor, D.Y. Patil, expired on Wednesday.
• Tapan Raychaudhuri, a distinguished historian of modern India’s economic and intellectual history, passed away at his home in Oxford on November 26. 
• Net migration to the United Kingdom has jumped by a substantial 40 per cent to 260,000 from the previous year, despite efforts by the David Cameron government to control the number of people arriving in Britain.
• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended a reserve price of Rs.3,104 crore per megahertz for CDMA spectrum, which is 15 per cent more than the Rs.2,685 per megahertz rate it had proposed in February. TRAI had proposed a reserve price of around Rs.1,800 crore for 800 Mhz for the auction in March, 2013, wherein Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) was the only bidder, and it won radio waves to operate in eight circles for Rs.3,639 crore. The new reserve price of Rs.3,104 crore is 72 per cent higher than the Rs.1,800 crore rate in 2013 auction.
• RBI said banks could extend loans to individuals against long-term bonds issued by them. This would “provide liquidity to retail investors who are invested in long-term bonds issued by banks for financing infrastructure and affordable housing”, RBI said in a notification to banks. Further, such loans should be subject to a ceiling, say, Rs.10 lakh per borrower. 
• Corporation Bank has decided to allow unlimited free transactions on its ATMs for savings bank account holders of the bank. The bank at present has 2,776 ATMs across the country. 
• Henkel Adhesive Technologies India along with the Footwear Design and Development Institute (FDDI) has inaugurated the Henkel-FDDI Shoe Academy in the Noida campus. Henkel has also announced a three-day certified training programme on shoe manufacturing to improve the manufacturing process, says a company release. 
• RBI issued final guidelines for small finance banks and payments banks, paving the way for mobile firms and supermarket chains, among others, to enter the banking arena to cater to individuals and small businesses. The minimum paid-up capital for these banks will be Rs.100 crore each. The foreign shareholding will be in line with the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy for private sector banks. According to the RBI, the objective of setting up of small finance banks will be to further financial inclusion by provision of savings vehicles and supply of credit to small business units, small and marginal farmers, micro and small industries and other unorganised sector entities, through high technology-low cost operations. Individuals/professionals with 10 years of experience in banking and finance and companies and societies will be eligible to set up small finance banks. Existing non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), micro finance institutions (MFIs), and local area banks (LABs) can also opt for conversion into small finance banks. The small finance banks will primarily undertake basic banking activities of acceptance of deposits and lending to un-served and underserved sections, including small business units, small and marginal farmers, micro and small industries and unorganised sector entities. The small finance banks will be subject to all prudential norms and regulations of RBI as applicable to existing commercial banks, including requirement of maintenance of Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) and Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR). The small finance banks will be required to extend 75 per cent of its adjusted net bank credit (ANBC) to the sectors eligible for classification as priority sector lending (PSL) by the RBI. “At least 50 per cent of its loan portfolio should constitute loans and advances of up to Rs. 25 lakh.” RBI also said that if the small finance bank aspired to transit into a universal bank, such transition would not be automatic, but would be subject to fulfilling minimum paid-up capital / net worth requirement as applicable to universal banks, among others. Existing non-bank pre-paid payment instrument (PPI) issuers and other entities such as individuals / professionals, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), corporate business correspondents(BCs), mobile telephone companies, super-market chains, companies, real sector cooperatives and public sector entities can apply to set up payments banks. A promoter/promoter group can have a joint venture with an existing scheduled commercial bank to set up a payments banks. However, scheduled commercial bank can take equity stake in a payments bank to the extent permitted under Section 19 (2) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, said RBI. On acceptance of demand deposits, the RBI said that payments bank would initially be restricted to holding a maximum balance of Rs. 100,000 per individual customer. Payments banks, however, cannot issue credit cards. These banks would be allowed to distribute non-risk sharing simple financial products like mutual fund unitsdertake lending activities,” said RBI. It also stated that apart from amounts maintained as Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), it will be required to invest minimum 75 per cent of its “demand deposit balances” in Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR).
• Phil Hughes, 25, fell victim to a delivery that did not quite have the pace he had anticipated. He swung and missed, and collapsed in a heap, never to rise.

 Credits: The Hindu, Google.