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?

1. Kandla Port, Gujarat
2. Visakhapatnam Port, Andhra Pradesh
3. Mormugao Port, Goa
4. Vallarpadam Terminal

Answer -D

What is the name of World’s Most Affordable COVID-19 Diagnostic Kit ?

1. Coronil
2. Corosure
3. CoroNA
4. CovidSure

Answer – B

Corosure is developed by

1. IIT Delhi
2. IIT Bombay
3. ICMR
4. IIT Kharagpur

Answer – A

World Youth Skills Day is celebrated on

1. 15 July
2. 16 July
3. 17 July
4. 18 July

Answer – A

Question of the Day

What is South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA)?

Answer in next session…