18 December 2013

Ø  The Director-General Military Operations (DGMO) of Pakistan has invited his Indian counterpart for a meeting to strengthen the mechanism to ensure ceasefire on the Line of Control. The meeting will take place on December 24

Ø  British company Tesco, the world’s third largest retailer, applied for permission to acquire a 50-per-cent stake for $110 million in Tata Group’s Trent, the company that operates the Star Bazaar hypermarket chain. The development assumes significance as there were calls for easing the policy’s conditions after Walmart, the second largest corporation in the Fortune Global 500 list for 2013, announced in October that it had parted ways with Indian partner Bharti.

Ø  The remarks raising tensions in the Korean peninsula came shortly after the Pentagon announced that it would be mobilising ground-based THAAD missile-interceptor batteries to protect its military bases on Guam, a U.S. territory located 3,380 km southeast of North Korea and “home to 6,000 American military personnel, submarines and bombers.” North Korea added that a war could break out “today or tomorrow.”

Ø  The Reserve Bank of India, on Tuesday, outlined a corrective action plan to minimise rising non-performing assets (NPAs). The plan would include incentivising early identification of problem cases, timely restructuring of accounts, which are considered to be viable, and taking prompt steps by banks for recovery or sale of unviable accounts. In a discussion paper on ‘Early recognition of financial distress, prompt steps for resolution and fair recovery for lenders: framework for revitalising distressed assets in the economy’, the RBI said it would set up a Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) to collect, store, and disseminate credit data to lenders.  Banks will have to furnish credit information to CRILC on all their borrowers having aggregate fund-based and non-fund based exposure of Rs.5 crore and above. RBI said that systemically important non-banking financial companies (NBFC-SI) would also be asked to furnish such information.

• A commercial version of India’s low-cost Aakash 2 tablet computer has been launched in Britain at a cost of 30 pound. The UbiSlate 7Ci, made by U.K.-based company Datawind, is based on Aakash 2, which is mainly used by students in India, and was designed to provide cheap internet access to help improve education.