Indian Current Affairs: 10.02.2007

The World Bank is orchestrating a move to establish the first ever global investment vehicle that will invest in local currency debt across emerging markets on a long-term basis.
The investment vehicle will be built up from the pooled portion of the burgeoning forex reserves of the developing countries, along with capital from some major economies.
The idea of this global bond fund, is to utilize the excess forex reserves of the emerging and other markets to integrate and strengthen financial markets across the emerging countries.
There are several advantages from such a fund:

It will help channeling savings into investments by transferring reserves from countries with excess supply to fund-starved countries by providing long-term debt.
It will assist in integrating capital markets across the globe.
When economies hold each other’s bonds, this is likely to facilitate diversification of financing from bank lending to bonds. This bond can also help lower risk premia of regional bonds, thereby encouraging others to enter the market.
Bond financing is considered relatively more stable source of debt financing, as bank loans are mostly illiquid, fixed price assets where the interest rate, or the price of the loan, does not vary much on the basis of changing market circumstances.

It will be given to the first scientist who comes up with a way to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
A similar challenge was earlier thrown in 1675 to devise a method of estimate longitude accurately.

Normally our government (as many other governments) is very touchy about hedge funds investing in the country. Investments by hedge funds are considered very volatile and highly unstable. They flee the country at the earliest opportunity. So how did they find their way into Indian realty?
Indian developers sell shares and hybrid instruments to global real estate funds owned by big banks and Wall Street bond houses. This is FDI allowed under automatic route.
These foreign investors sell the securities to hedge funds, often within weeks after the FDI deal is done. Though FDI regulations in real estate have a three year lock-in period for the investor, this only means that the money cannot leave India before three years; it does not prevent the foreign investor from selling the shares to another foreign investor.
FDI in real estate has shot up over 400% in 2006 to $70 crores ($700 mn)

It is about construction of a dam on the Chenab river in J&K.
Under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan, Professor Raymond Lafitte was appointed by the World Bank, after consultations with the two governments (India and Pakistan) in 2005.

India has been insisting on “iron clad” authentication of current troop positions as it is wary of a repeat of Kargil experience when Pakistani troops captured the mountain heights vacated by Indian in winter. However, Pakistan has refused to do so as it would tantamount to validating what it calls illegal Indian occupation of the Siachen glacier in 1984.

The Tata group comprises 96 companies spanning 7 business sectors: information systems and communications, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products and chemicals.
The group has operations in more than 54 countries across six continents, and its companies export products and services to 120 nations.
Its revenues stand at Rs. 96,722 crores ($21.9 bn) i.e., about 2.8% of the country’s GDP. They employ about 2.4 lakh employees.

The aircraft time is shared in this model by several owners.
PrivateAir launched by Rajeev Chandrasekhar of BPL fame is the second such company in India.
The first is Delhi based ClubOne.

The WPI has touched a high of 6.58% in late January. This is two year high.
The CPI has is closer to 9%.
The money supply is growing at a fast clip at 20.4%, much beyond the RBI’s own projections of 15%.

The SCAA’s (Specialty Coffee Association of America) Sustainability Award for 2007 has been bagged by Poabs Estates of Palghat, Kerala beating 21 other applicants from all over the world.
Specialty coffee is coffee of a unique and consistent quality as certified not only by the seller, but also recognized as such by the global agencies.

With their buoyant tax revenues, they are likely to borrow only about $1800 crores ($18 bn) this year as against $2600 crores in 2006.

Ms. Smith, 39 died after collapsing in her hotel room in Hollywood.
She is a very controversial but beautiful Hollywood celebrity, who people will remember for marrying an octogenarian oil tycoon who was 89 when she was 26.
She was the Playboy’s Playmate of the year in 1993.

It is being built at Svalbard, off the coast of Norway to protect seeds against plant diseases and catastrophes such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change. Its construction will begin in March 2007 and it is scheduled to open in 2008.

Indian Current Affairs