Goaltide Daily Current Affairs 2022

Jan 20, 2022

Current Affair 1:
Green Digital Finance Alliance

 

Green Digital Finance Alliance was launched by UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to address the potential for digital finance and fintech-powered business innovations to reshape the financial system in ways that better align it with the needs of sustainable development.

The Alliance’s Advisory Council comprises of innovative financial and sustainable development institutions committed to using digital technology to advance sustainable finance.

It launched the Every Action Counts Coalition, a global network of digital, financial, retail investment, e-commerce and consumer goods companies.

Current Affair 2:
Centre may reduce moisture content limit for wheat, paddy

Source Link

 

A recent draft proposal by the Union government to change the moisture content limit for wheat and paddy has farmers worried ahead of the rabi procurement season that begins April 2022.

The ideal moisture content in wheat may be reduced to 12 per cent from 14 per cent and in paddy to 16 per cent from 17 per cent, according to the discussions between  the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution and the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which procures food grains from farmers on a minimum support price (MSP).

At present, farmers have to take a price cut on MSP when selling wheat stocks above the 12 per cent limit to FCI. Stocks with above 14 per cent moisture are rejected. If the proposal is promulgated, wheat stocks with moisture content above 12 per cent will not be procured even with a price cut.

Moisture content has been a sensitive issue with farmers as this is yet another hurdle for them to fetch a good price for their produce. Untimely rain ahead of procurement season and lack of sheltered storage space at the mandis already make it difficult for farmers to keep their stocks dry. Lowering of the moisture content limits will add to their woes.

The procurement process has also been delayed in the last few years for several problems at the mandis (market).

The higher the moisture in the crop, the more difficult it is to store for long.

After harvesting, wheat absorbs moisture while rice loses it. On an average, wheat contains 15 to 22 per cent moisture on harvest. Farmers have to dry their produce after harvesting and even at mandis before procurement.

 

Current Affair 3:
Second-quarter report of the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES)

 

Basic introduction:

Recently, the Ministry of Labour & Employment released the report of the second quarter of Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) for the period July to September 2021. This report is part of the ‘All-India Quarterly Establishment-based Employment Survey (AQEES)’.

  1. This is the second in the series, the first publication of which, covering the first quarter of 2021-22, was published in September 2021.
  2. The AQEES, conducted by the Labour Bureau, has been taken up to provide quarterly updates about employment vacancies, training, and other related parameters for selected nine (9) sectors of the non-farm economy over successive quarters.
  3. These nine (9) sectors, viz; Manufacturing, Construction, Trade, Transport, Education, Health, Accommodation & Restaurants, Information Technology (IT) & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), and Financial Services, account for a substantial share of the total employment in the non-farm establishments in the country.

9 sectors accounting for 85% of total employment in units with 10 or more workers have been chosen

The selected nine sectors account for around 85% of the total employment in units with 10 or more workers as per the 6th Economic Census. For this survey, around 12,000 units were targeted to be covered among those establishments employing 10 or more workers in the organised sector from these 9 sectors.

The over-all percentage of female workers stood  at  32.1, higher than 29.3% reported during the first round of QES.

23.5% of all the establishments were registered under the Companies Act, this percentage was as high as 82.8% in IT / BPO, 51.2% in Construction, 42.8% in Manufacturing, 36.4% in Transport, 32.1% in Trade and 23.8% in financial services.

Of the total employment estimated in the selected nine sectors, Manufacturing accounted for nearly 39%, followed by Education with 22% and Health as well as IT/BPOs sectors both around 10%.

 

 

Regular workers constitute 87% of the estimated workforce in the nine selected sectors, with only 2% being casual workers. However, in the Construction sector, 20% of the workers were contractual and 6.4% were casual workers.

It is somewhat encouraging to note that 16.8% of the establishments provided formal skill development programmes, although mostly for their own employees.

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