Economy & Banking Current Affairs October 2015 (Part 1)

EPFO got SKOCH Awards for Smart Governance Initiatives

• Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) got SKOCH Award on September 23, 2015 for Smart Governance for its initiatives on UAN Programme and Transformation of Social Security Agenda in India. It is the 5th Award EPFO own in the last two years.
• Some of the major initiatives taken by EPFO are, distribution of pension to the pensioners on the first day of the month. Online Registration of Establishments, Online submission of returns and remittances by the employers through Net-Banking and Online facility for filing of statutory returns by PF exempted establishments.
• EPFO (headquartered in New Delhi) is a statutory body comes under the aegis of Ministry of Labour and Employment. It administers a compulsory contributory Provident Fund Scheme, Pension Scheme and an Insurance Scheme.

EPFO Hiked Insurance Cover up to Rs 6 Lakh

• The Ministry of labour has agreed to enhance insurance benefits under the Employees Deposit Linked Insurance (EDLI) Scheme of the retirement fund body EPFO. The proposed new limit is Rs 6 lakh, an over 66% from the current limit of Rs 3.6 lakh.
• A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the EPFO Central Board of Trustees (CBT) in Hyderabad on September 16, 2015. The meeting was chaired by labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya.
• 10 members of central trade unions, who represent the employees, nine members representing employers’ associations, members from the Central government and five State government representatives.
• The move is likely to give incentive to 4 crore_> subscribers of the scheme to stay put in the EPFO and comes at a time when the BJP-led NDA government is working towards making the National Pension System (NPS) as an alternative to EPFO, thus threatening the existence of the EPFO.

Read Also – Smart Practice Current Affairs October 2015.

Government Imposed 20% Safeguard Duty on Select Steel Products

• The government of India imposed provisional safeguard duty of 20% on import of certain categories of steel from all countries on September 14, 2015 with a view to protect domestic producers from recent surge in inward shipments.
• The domestic steel industry is grappling with problems of low demand and facing competition from sudden surge in cheap imports from China, Korea, Japan and Russia. Domestic steel producers such as SAIL, Essar Steel and JSW Steel had complained of a surge in imports of steel products.
• This duty will be applicable for a period of 200 days, during which period the inquiry would be completed by Directorate General of Safeguards. Safeguard duty is a WTO-compatible temporary measure that is brought in for a certain time frame to avert any damage to a country’s domestic industry from cheap imports.

BSNL Upgraded the Speed of All Landline Broadband Customers

• The BSNL has decided on September 7, 2015 to upgrade its Broadband speed to minimum 2 Mbps at no additional cost for all the Broadband customers on PAN-India Basis from October 1, 2015. It is in , continuation with free night calling from BSNL landline to all operator network from 9:00 PM to 7:00 AM and free incoming roaming services for its mobile customers.
• The speed up-gradation will benefit all the existing and new Broadband customers of BSNL as envisaged in New Telecom Policy – 2012. BSNL is having more than 77 Million Mobile customers, more than 16 million wired line telephone connections and around 10 million wired Broadband connections.
• Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) BSNL is the first service provider to provide the Broadband Access to the country. BSNL launched the Broadband services over its landline in India in 2Q05 with speed of 256 kbps and above over the State of art Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) based IP infrastructure in urban as well as Rural areas.

Finance Minister Notified SEBI-FMC Merger

• The government said on September 2, 2015 that it has notified the merger of commodities regulator Forward Market Commission (FMC) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
• A notification to this effect was.issued on August 28, 2015. As a result, FCRA, 1952 gets repealed and regulation of commodity derivatives market will shift to SEBI under Securities Contracts Regulation Act (SCRA) 1956 with effect from September 28, 2015.
• With this merger, all three national and six regional commodity exchanges will comq under the ambit of national capital market regulator, SEBI. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced the merger in 2015 Budget speech in order to strengthen the regulation of commodity futures market.

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