Economy and Banking Current Affairs 2017
CBDT Signed 10 more Unilateral APAs with Taxpayers
- The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has signed 10 more unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs) with Indian taxpayers as it looks to reduce litigation by providing certainty in transfer pricing on February 28, 2017.
- The 10 APAs signed in the past one week pertain to sectors like telecom, pharma, banking and finance, steel, retail and information technology.
- With this, the total number of APAS entered into by the CBDT has reached 140. This includes 10 Bilateral APAs and 130 Unilateral APAs.
FDI Inflow grew 18% to $ 46 Billion in 2016 DIPP
- The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India grew 18% during 2016 to touch $ 46 billion, as per data released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) showed on February 26, 2017.
- The country attracted FDI of $ 39.32 billion in 2015. Bulk of the FDI came* in from Singapore, Mauritius, the Netherlands and Japan.
- The main sectors which attracted the highest foreign inflows include services, telecom, trading, computer hardware and software and automobile.
India and ADB Signed $ 375 Million Pact for Loans
- India and ADB have signed $ 375 million pact for loans and grants to develop 800 km Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor, which is the first phase of a planned 2500 km East Coast Economic Corridor on February 26, 2017.
- It approved loans comprising a $ 500 million multitranche facility to build key infrastructure in the four main centers along the corridor— Visakhapatnam, Kakinada, Amaravati, and Yerpedu-Srikalahasti in Andhra Pradesh.
- The first tranche of $ 245 million that was signed will finance subprojects to develop high-quality internal infrastructure in 2 of me 4 nodes of corridor— Visakhapatnam and Yerpedu-Srikalahasti.
- Another component of the approved ADB funds that the signatories signed was a $ 125 million policy-based loan that will be used for capacity development or institutions engaged in corridor management.
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BharatQR Code Launched to Push Less-cash Economy
- BharatQR code, the world’s first interoperable payment acceptance solution, was launched as part of efforts to move towards less-cash economy on February 21, 2017.
- It Developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Mastercard, and Visa, BharatQR code would require merchants to only display one QR code instead of multiple ones.
- QR code or Quick Response code is a two-dimensional machine-readable code made up of black and white squares and are used for storing URLs or other information. These can be read by the camera of a smartphone.
Second Gateway of India Geoeconomic Dialogue Held
- The Ministry of External Affairs co-hosted the Second Gateway of IndiaGeoeconomic Dialogue with Gateway House on February 13-14, 2017 in Mumbai.
- This is India’s premier geoeconomics conference on the theme ‘Where Geopolitics meets Business’ focussed on building synergies between business and foreign policy.
- It is aimed at building synergy between business and foreign policy.
