19-11-21 Daily-Karnataka-KPSC Current Affairs

TheKarnatakaDigital economy Mission (KDEM) in PARTNERSHIP with Indias top financial technology companies has launched afintechtask group under the Leadership of RazorPay founder and CEO Harshil Mathur. The task group will work towards creating a projected roadmap for the Growth of the , identifying the opportunities and challenges faced by the fintech ecosystem, and leveraging the partnering institutions and government to solve for them.B V Naidu, chairman, KDEM said, India has emerged as one of the worlds fastest-growing tech innovation hubs in the world, with fintech leading the charge as the industry has raised close to $10 billion in Investment. Indias Financial Inclusion and digitisation success story has been made possible by the combined efforts of the government as well as tech innovations, fundamentally disrupting the way masses access financial Services.

Taking a cue from this, KDEM launched the first Karnataka Fintech Task group, bringing together industry leaders to further pave the way for future innovations, founders, and citizens to participate in Indias fintech success story.Reports by FICCI and BCG (Boston Consulting Group) suggest that the Indian fintech sector will attain a valuation of $150-$160 billion by 2025. Karnataka is Home to Indias leading fintech companies like Razorpay,Zerodha, Khatabook, and Cred. These companies are tackling issues ranging from digital payments adoption to offering efficient neo-Banking solutions, investment avenues, access to easy credit. Apart from Mathur, the task group comprises Timmanna Gouda of Whatsloan, Miten Sampat of Cred and Nithin Kamath of Zerodha, among others.

The Hingoli income division has given the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project 225 hectares of land in Maharashtra.

Highlights:

The land was given to the country in order to organise primary facilities.

In the United States, just two such labs exist: Hanford in Washington and Livingston in Louisiana. Gravitational waves are studied at these labs.

This initiative will provide scientists and engineers more for Learning more about gravitational waves.

In 2016, the LIGO-India mega scientific plan for analysing gravity waves received “in principle” permission from the Indian government.

LIGO is a huge observatory designed to detect and experiment with cosmic gravitational waves. Its primary goal is to exploit gravitational-wave data in astronomy research.

The LIGO India project was suggested with the goal of relocating one of the most sophisticated LIGO detectors from Hanford to India.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy are piloting this initiative (DAE).

The Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) has provided updated data on Foreign Exchange reserves. The country’s foreign exchange reserves fell by $ 763 million to $ 640.112 billion in the week ending November 12, according to new figures.

Highlights:

In the week ending November 5, foreign exchange reserves fell by USD 1.145 billion to USD 640.874 billion. Reserves, on the other hand, hit a new high of USD 642.453 billion in the week ending September 3, 2021.

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) weekly data shows that the reduction in forex reserves this reporting week was due to a drop in foreign currency assets (FCA), a major component of overall reserves. FCA fell $2.094 billion to $575.487 billion in the reporting week, according to the data.

Foreign currency assets comprise the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units held in foreign exchange reserves, such as the euro, pound, and yen, expressed in dollar terms. In the reporting week, gold reserves increased by $ 1.461 billion to $ 40.239 billion.

On November 19, 2021, World Toilet Day will be recognised as an official United Nations international day all over the world.

Highlights:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released the fourth edition of its Global Report on Tobacco Use Trends 2000-2025.

Highlights:

According to the research, the South-East Asia region had the fastest reduction in cigarette consumption. In 2020, the Average prevalence of smoking among males will be 25%, down from 50% in 2000.

Tobacco smoking among Women in the South-East Region has declined from 8.9% in 2000 to 1.6 percent in 2020.

In order to fulfil the Global NCD action goal plan by 2025, India and Nepal are anticipated to achieve a 30 percent relative decrease in tobacco usage.

According to the WHO research, if present tobacco control efforts continue, smoking rates in this region might drop to as low as 11% by 2025.