What are Primary Agricultural Credit Societies?
- Primary Agricultural Credit Societies- are the grass root level arms of the short-term co-operative credit structure.
- It deals directly with the rural borrowers, gives those loans, and collects repayments of loans given.
- It serves as the final link between the ultimate borrowers on the one hand and the higher financing agencies, namely the SCBS, and the RBI/NABARD on the other hand.
India’s first trans-shipment hub – Vallarpadam Terminal
- Shri Mandaviya reviews the development of India’s first trans-shipment hub – Vallarpadam Terminal of Cochin Port, Kerala.
- It is envisaged as first trans-shipment port of India, managed by DP World.
- It is to ensure that Indian cargo trans-ship through Indian Port.
- Vallarpadam Terminal is developed by Ministry of Shipping.
- Trans-shipment Hub- It is the terminal at the port which handles containers, stores them temporarily and transfers them to other ships for the onward destination.
- It is best positioned Indian port with regard to proximity to International sea routes.
- It is located at least average nautical distance from all Indian feeder ports.
- It entails a connectivity which has multiple weekly feeder connections to all ports on West & East Coast of India.
- It has proximity to key hinterland markets of India.
- It has the infrastructure to manage large ships and capacity to scale it up as per requirement.
World’s Most Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit Corosure Developed by IIT Delhi
- Union HRD Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ Launches World’s Most Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit Corosure.
- Approved by the ICMR and DCGI.
- The Corosure Kit has been developed indigenously and is much cheaper than other kits.
- The test kit will be priced at the base price of Rs 399 and after addition of RNA isolation and laboratory charges; the total cost is expected to be Rs 650.
- The team has used the comparative sequence analyses to identify unique regions of short stretches of RNA sequences in the COVID 19 and SARS COV – 2 genomes.
Google to invest Rs 33,737 crore in Jio platforms
- Ambani announced that it has partnered with Google to develop and launch a new 5G supported affordable entry-level smartphone.
- With this, Google will be joining partners like Facebook, Silverlake, KKR, TPG, Intel and Qualcomm, among others.
- Google recently said it will be investing $10 billion in India over the next five to seven years.
- With the help of Google’s partnership, Ambani said, he wants to make India 2G-mukt (2G free).
15th India-EU (Virtual) Summit
- Under this summit both the countries have announced the launch of a high-level economic and investment dialogue to work out a bilateral trade and investment pact as countries and firms look to decouple and diversify supply chains from China.
- The Free Trade Agreement between these two partners remained elusive in this summit.
- India and the EU have set out trade objectives for the next 5 years.
- Both the sides will continue the regulatory dialogue on pharmaceuticals and medical devices along with that commitments to accelerate cooperation in agricultural and marine trade.
- Central Bureau of Investigation and Europol has signed agreement for the cooperation.
- Closer military ties are to be established.
- EU is our largest trading partner for goods with trade exceeding $100 billion. We also have a large services trade of approximately $40 billion.
World Youth Skills Day: 15 JULY
- It was the fifth anniversary of ‘Skill India’ mission.
- Theme: Skills for a resilient youth
- Prime Minister exhorted the youth to skill, reskill and upskill in order to remain relevant in the rapidly changing business environment and market conditions.
- The day is celebrated by United Nations along with other world organizations. Events related to the day is organized by UNESCO and ILO.
- It is being celebrated since 2014.
Current COVID19 Situation in India
QUIZ TIME
Which of the following is the first trans-shipment hub of India?
- Kandla Port, Gujarat
- Visakhapatnam Port, Andhra Pradesh
- Mormugao Port, Goa
- Vallarpadam Terminal
Answer -D
What is the name of World’s Most Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit ?
- Coronil
- Corosure
- CoroNA
- CovidSure
Answer – B
Corosure is developed by
- IIT Delhi
- IIT Bombay
- ICMR
- IIT Kharagpur
Answer – A
World Youth Skills Day is celebrated on
- 15 July
- 16 July
- 17 July
- 18 July
Answer – A
Question of the Day
What is South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA)?
Answer in next session…