Current Affairs in the Month - April 2012

Current affairs of April 2012 to face an Interview or any competitive exams.

Current Affairs on Banks, Telecoms and Oil and Gas industry has been updated in this article.

Banks

Changes in the bank rate or interest of the banks. 

• Reduced the bank rates from 9.5% to 9% where Banks/financial institutions pay to the central bank on borrowed funds.

• Repo and Reverse repo benchmark rate reduced by .50%, from 8.5% to 8%, and reverse repo from 7.5% to 7%.

• CRR (Cash Reserve Ratio) – has been reduced from 5.5% to 4.75%. The objective/reason for reduction of CRR is to infuse more money in the economy. It has infused Rs 48,000 crore.

• On the latest move, RBI has made it mandatory to print the MICR and IFSE code on the passbook and statement of account of the customers.  IFSC code is a pre-requisite for National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) transactions.

• Saving Deposit rate is been deregulated.

Telecom

• Vodafone has won the case, where it has paid Rs.11,000 crore as tax for Income Tax (M&A) for buying out abroad firm Hutchison Whampoa Ltd's Indian mobile business in 2007. Supreme court has given an verdict favorable to Vodafone( earlier Bombay court's verdict was unfavorable) directing IT-department to return Rs.2500crores to Vodafone.

• Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has made mandatory/compulsory to charge/bill only on per second basis ( introduced by Tata Docomo as its strategy to attract) to all prepaid and postpaid customers and allow the telecom player to increase the processing fee charge for Top up recharges(above Rs.20, from rs.2 to rs.3).

• Airtel is the first company in India to roll out 4G service.

• Samsung, South Korean firm the Market Leader in Smartphones segment posted its highest profits of $5.15 billion in this quarter, against the former leader Nokia, Finland based company has posted a huge loss of $1.2 bn (Jan-Mar).

-> Latest Facts and Figures of Banks and Economy 2012-13, for the latest Inflation rate, fiscal deficit rate and other deposit rate as on April 2012.

Oil and Gas

The Major Oil players in India are Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL), Indian Oil Corp (IOC), and Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL). These companies has started threatening the government to increased the prices of petrol. 

Why?

Because, the current crude oil as on April 2012 is trading at $121.3 per barrel. Huge losses are being incurred/accrued in the books of these companies has they are selling the petrol below the market prices.

So currently Rs.8-Rs.10/- is the loss on per liter of petrol sold. and Rs.14 on diesel and of course a huge pie  on LPG gas Cylinder of Rs.570/each lpg cylinder.

Solution for Rise in Petrol Prices:

Now the States levied VAT or Sales tax, are ranging in between from 15 to 33 per cent (ie.,Rs.10-Rs.19/liter is being paid only as taxes), this has to be reduced so that the pressure will not be on the consumer by hiking the prices again. Goa has already implemented it, by removing the tax on petrol.

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