21.08.2007

• One of you asked me to explain about an Overnight Index Swap through our shout-box. I have done so in today’s Discover It blog. Take a look at it here.
• Then in today’s paper I came across an excellent debate on fertilizer subsidy. I excerpted something from it for your record in Discover It. Take a look at it here.
• NRSMMS
• National Radio Spectrum Management and Monitoring System
• World’s first ghost restaurant
• Our own magician PC Sorcar, is coming out with a theme restaurant at Baruipur, 25 km from Kolkata.
• It will have headless waiters taking orders from you amidst an ambience of a graveyard with ghosts, goblins and ghouls doubling up as chefs and stewards.
• Are you game?
• PN1 dilution not on government’s radar right now
• Press Note 1 bars multinationals from setting up their own companies in a similar line of business without the permission of Indian JV partner.
• Government initially toyed with the idea of diluting PN1 to facilitate an investment friendly policy.
• It has now decided to remove contentious or controversial proposals from the FDI policy to avoid political opposition.
• The current FDI policy is to focus on further opening up of certain select sectors to FDI which are going to meet minimal or no political opposition.
• Urban poor to get subsidized home loans
• The government is working on a plan to offer housing loans to the urban poor at a subsidized rate of 7 to 8% per annum. It may offer the subsidized rate for a loan up to Rs. 1.5 lakh for a 5 to 7 year period.
• 10% bank advances may be earmarked for SME segment
• Though state owned and private banks are mandated to allocate 40% of their net bank credit to the priority sector, there is no sub-target for SME segment; unlike for agriculture, which has a sub-target of 18% of the net bank credit.
• The share of loans to micro and small enterprises has witnessed a significant drop over the last decade.
• National Investment Fund
• It was set up basically to hold the proceeds from the stake sale in PSUs in the capital markets. The proceeds were meant to be used to finance social sector projects in areas such as education, healthcare and employment, and capital investment in select PSUs.
• Set up with lot of fanfare in November 2005, the fund has no corpus till now.
• Indian Vegetable Research Institute
• It is Varanasi.
• RBI ownership in other banks
• If we were thinking that the RBI only had a huge stake in SBI (which was since transferred to the Government of India), we are in for surprise.
• It owns 72.5% of Nabard and 100% in NHB – National Housing Bank.
• Moves are afoot to divest this also the government to steer clear of the conflict of interest that arises as owner and regulator.
• What is a credit blowout?
• It is used to describe the explosive situation in the market when banks go on a lending overdrive creating a huge mass of borrowers. In the US, easy liquidity and low interest rates had resulted in banks pushing borrowers to take larger loans leading to a huge credit blowout.
• What are commodity debentures?
• These instruments use the prices of a specific commodity or a basket of commodities to fix the returns, as against equity-linked instruments which have returns based on benchmarks like the Nifty index.
• CSTO
• Collective Security Treaty Organization. It is a defence pact among the former Soviet Union states.
• Its Secretary General is Nikolai Bordyuzha.
• It is commonly called the Warsaw Pact 2.
• Sadbhavana Award
• Was conferred on Hem Dutta, the 63 year old social activist from Assam for his continued commitment to the cause of peace and non-violence in Assam. He has been doing pioneering work to promote communal harmony among people living in Assam.