DAILY CURRENT
AFFAIRS: 15TH MAR 2017
(DAILY NEWS INDIA)
1. FOOTWEAR
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE BILL, 2017 INTRODUCED IN LOK SABHA
i. The Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala
Sitharaman introduced the Footwear Design and Development Institute Bill, 2017
in the Lok Sabha in order to declare the FDDI as an Institution of National
Importance.
ii. Its objective is to enable FDDI emerge as
Centre of Excellence to meet with the international standards and address the
shortage of trained human resource in the sector.
iii. The Bill seeks to facilitate and promote
teaching, training and research in all disciplines relating to design and
development of Footwear and leather products.
iv. The institute shall consist of a governing
council where chairperson shall be an academician, scientist or industrialist
from the leather sector to be nominated by the central government.
iv. The central government shall have the power to
remove the chairperson or other members or reconstitute the governing council
if it considers it appropriate to do so.
v. It will also develop an international centre for
creation and transmission of information, with a focus on educational,
professional and industrial commitments.
2. GOVERNMENT
ESTABLISHES BANANA RESEARCH CENTRE IN VAISHALI DISTRICT OF BIHAR
i. Shri Radha Mohan Singh, The Union Agriculture
and Farmer’s Welfare Minister laid the foundation stone of the Banana Research
Centre at Gorole, Vaishali, Bihar Centre to fulfill the aspirations of the
local banana growers.
ii. The new centre will work to find reasons behind
less production in banana, enhancement in acreage for cultivation, suitable
utilization of the various parts of the plants, different products, marketing
and value addition.
iii. The new research centre at Vaishali will let
the research work to get more momentum to bring a new era of banana cultivation
in Bihar and surrounding states
iv. India is the largest producer of banana in the
world. Among the states, Maharashtra is the largest producer followed by Tamil
Nadu.
3. RBI LIKELY
TO OPEN UPI PLATFORM FOR DIGITAL WALLETS SOON
i.
The Reserve Bank of India is set
to open up the Unified Payment Interface platform for digital wallets firms as
part of the government’s digitization campaign.
ii. Presently, the digital wallets can access the
UPI network through partner banks to facilitate bank-to-bank money transfers.
iii. The initiative will enable the digital wallets
such as Paytm and MobiKwik to become inter-operable and also help them to
expand their business model.
iv. RBI is expected to issue guidelines shortly on
inte`roperability and ‘know your customer’ norms for digital wallet companies
as well as the interchange fees to be levied between the wallets to access the
UPI framework.