SBI Jr Associates main examination - Banks/RRBs/SSC Special - II

The Young Hans provides important study material useful for General/Financial Awareness section of the Main Examination of SBI Junior Associates to be held on June 25 and 26

Revenue deficit: Revenue deficit is when the net amount received (revenues less expenditures) falls short of the projected net amount to be received. This occurs when the actual amount of revenue received and/or the actual amount of expenditures do not correspond with predicted revenue and expenditure figures.

Disinvestment: The selling of the government’s stake in public sector undertakings is called disinvestment.

Fiscal deficit: A fiscal deficit occurs when a government's total expenditures exceed the revenue that it generates, excluding money from borrowings.Deficit differs from debt, which is an accumulation of yearly deficits.

National Income: National Income is the money value of all goods and services produced in a country during a year.

Cheque Truncation: Cheque truncation (check truncation in American english) is the conversion of a physical cheque into a substitute electronic form for transmission to the paying bank. Cheque truncation eliminates cumbersome physical presentation of the cheque and saves time and processing costs.

Account payee cheque: Account payee cheques can be routed only through accounts but cannot be paid across the counter.Two parallel lines drawn on the top left corner of the cheque is called as crossing of the cheque.

Post-dated cheque: The date on the cheque beyond today’s date then cheque becomes post-dated.

Stale cheque: Cheque is valid for 3 months. If the date on the cheque is before 3 months, then the cheque becomes stale.

Mutilated cheque: It is a damaged cheque.

At par cheque: It is payable anywhere in India.

Multi-city cheque: A cheque which is payable in any branch of a particular bank.

Soiled note: A soiled note means a note which has become dirty due to usage and also includes a two-piece note pasted together wherein both the pieces presented belong to the same note, and form the entire note
.
Mutilated banknote: Mutilated banknote is a banknote, of which a portion is missing or which is composed of more than two pieces.

Imperfect banknote: Imperfect banknote means any banknote, which is wholly or partially, obliterated, shrunk, washed, altered or indecipherable but does not include a mutilated banknote.

Currency chest: To facilitate the distribution of banknotes and rupee coins, the Reserve Bank has authorised select branches of scheduled banks to establish Currency Chests.These are actually storehouses where banknotes and rupee coins are stocked on behalf of the Reserve Bank. The currency chest branches are expected to distribute banknotes and rupee coins to other bank branches in their area of operation.

Internet Banking : The accessing of bank information, accounts and transactions with the help of a computer through the financial institution's website on the Internet is called online banking. It is also called Internet banking or e-banking.

National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT): NEFT is an Indian system of electronic transfer of money from one bank or bank branch to another. The banks or their branches that support such transactions have to participate in the NEFT network.

Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS): Real-time gross settlement systems (RTGS) are specialist funds transfer systems where transfer of money or securities takes place from one bank to another on a "real time" and on "gross" basis. Settlement in "real time" means payment transaction is not subjected to any waiting period.

BhartiyaMahila Bank (BMB): BhartiyaMahila Bank (BMB)is an Indian financial services banking company based in New Delhi, India.India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated the system on 19 November 2013 on the occasion of the 94th birth anniversary of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The headquarters is in New Delhi. Bank will get an initial capital of Rs 1,000 crore.UshaAnanthasubramanian is the first Managing Director and Chairperson of BhartiyaMahila Bank.

Start-Up India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the 'Start-Up India' movement with an action-plan aimed at boosting entrepreneurship at the grassroots-level. The salient features are:

• Tax exemptions for three years and concessions on capital gains tax.
• Compliance regime based on self-certification and no regulatory inspection for three years.
• A fund of Rs. 10,000 crore to back start-ups. Initially the corpus will be Rs. 2,500 crore. Also, a credit guarantee fund for start-ups.
• A Start-up India hub - a single point of contact for interactions with the government.
• Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) for promotion of research and development.
• 90 days for a start-up to close down its business.
• 80 per cent reduction in patent filing fee and fast-track mechanism for start-up patent applications.
• Relaxed norms of public-procurement for start-ups.
• 5 lakh schools and 10 lakh students to be involved in core innovation programmes.
• A mobile appis launched on April 1 making it possible to register start-ups in one day.

Marginal Cost of Funds-based Lending Rate (MCLR)
MCLR is the new benchmark lending rate at which banks will now lend to new borrowers. Till 31 March 2016, banks used the base rate as the benchmark rate to lend. MCLR is built on four components—marginal cost of funds, negative carry on account of cash reserve ratio (CRR), operating costs and tenor premium.It will replace the existing base rate system from 1st April 2016 onwards.

Why the MCLR reform is introduced?
At present, the banks are slightly slow to change their interest rate in accordance with repo rate change by the RBI. Commercial banks are significantly depending upon the RBI’s Liquid Adjustment Facility (LAF) to get short term funds. But they are reluctant to change their individual lending rates and deposit rates with periodic changes in repo rate.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal BimaYojana
The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the New Crop Insurance Scheme,‘Pradhan MantriFasalBimaYojana’ to boost the agricultural sector.
The theme of the Scheme is One Nation – One Scheme. In this, all shortcomings and weaknesses of all previous insurance schemes were removed and incorporated with the best features of all schemes.

Highlights

• Farmers will pay a uniform premium of only 2 percent for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops.
• In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, farmers will pay a premium of only 5 percent.
• There will not be any upper limit on Government subsidy.
• Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers. Now, this capping is removed and farmers will get full sum insured without any reduction against their claim.
• The usage of technology will be encouraged to a great extent. Smart phones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop cutting experiments.

By: Sree Kumar Guntupalli