GUJARAT
- Gujarat to borrow Rs 42,929 crore to meet budgetary commitments
- State budget documents for 2019-20 suggest that the Gujarat government will have to borrow an additional Rs 42,929 crore this financial year to fulfil its budgetary commitments. Of this amount, Rs 38,099 crore will be used in paying back principal and interest of old loans.
- The debt component of the state government has almost doubled over the past five years. In the 2015-16 budget, the total debt financing was Rs 23,486 crore which increased to Rs 42,929 crore in 2019-20.
- As per budget estimates, by the end of financial year 2019-20, Gujarat’s total public debt will cross Rs 2.66 lakh crore mark, which was Rs 2.38 crore at the end of 2018-19.
INTERNATIONAL
- Iran exceeds Uranium enrichment limit set under 2015 nuclear deal
- Iran has breached a uranium enrichment cap set by a troubled 2015 nuclear deal and warned Europe against taking retaliatory measures.
- Iran has officially surpassed the 3.67 per cent Uranium enrichment limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal.
- The country had stopped complying with some elements of the 2015 nuclear deal (officially called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
- Signed by China, France, Germany, European Union, Iran, Russia, the UK and the US, the JCPoA treaty was aimed at limiting Iran’s civilian energy programme.
NATIONAL
- MoFCC launched Immunocontraception Project
- Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) launched a project for undertaking ‘immunocontraceptive measures’
- It is used for population management of 4 species of wild animals namely Elephant, Wild boar, Monkeys and Blue Bull (Nilgai).
- Human-elephant caused the maximum number of casualties.
- Between 2014 and March 2019, around 2,398 people died in an elephant attack in the country.
- West Bengal has a maximum number of such deaths.
- It is a birth control method that uses the body’s immune response to prevent pregnancy.
- It is a technology that uses a female animal’s immune system to build a protein around the egg that prevents it from fertilizing.
- The Pilot project will begin in Uttarakhand.
- It is implemented in the rest of the country.
- The Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the National Institute of Immunology (NII) are the bodies involved to develop a protocol of immunocontraception.
- Two new heavy-lift Chinook helicopters for IAF arrived at the Mundra port, Gujarat
- American aerospace company confirmed about the arrival of 2 new heavy-lift CH-47F (I) Chinookshelicopters for the Indian Air Force (IAF).
- It is at the Mundra port in Gujarat.
- They will provide IAF an unmatched strategic airlift capability.
- IAF ordered 15 Chinooks along with 22 Apache attack helicopters.
- The first 4 Chinooks received in February, 2019.
- The CH-47 Chinook, advanced multi-mission helicopter unsurpassed ability to deliver heavy payloads to high altitudes.
- It is suitable for operations in the high Himalayas.
- Unique Disability Identity Cards (UDID)
- The Unique Disability Identity Cards (UDID) for persons with disabilities, announced in 2015, are proving to be a long wait often stretching for years for hundreds of applicants.
- With the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 expanding the types of disabilities from 7 to 21, state UDID departments are struggling with the logistics of identifying and quantifying disabilities for issuance of the cards.
According to the 2011 census, which happened before the expansion in the definition of disability, there were 2.7 crore disabled.
- Though announced in 2015, the UDID scheme was launched in phases and finally covered all states just last year. At the current rate of expansion, it could take more than a decade for all persons with disabilities to get the UDID
- Rs 3 lakh crore private power investment at risk as discoms delay payments
- As much as Rs 3 lakh crore of investment in a dozen power plants of the private sector is at risk of turning into NPA as states buying power have not been making payment for months.
- According to data available on the PRAAPTI portal of the Ministry of Power, 12 power generating companies belonging to firms such as GMR and Adani Group and public sector generators like NTPC have about Rs 41,730 crore outstanding from state distribution companies (discoms) as of December 2018.
- According to PRAAPTI portal, Uttar Pradesh takes 544 days to clear its dues while Maharashtra takes 580 days.
- More than 80 per cent of the outstanding is accounted for by India’s most industrialised states such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu who are biggest consumers of electricity. The top-10 states take an average of 562 days for payments.
- A recent World Bank study reviewing the power sector’s performance points to challenges such as outstanding payments of generating companies pending with discoms.
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