Weekly CA Quiz: December 2017 4th week with PDF

Explanation: The government has allowed companies, till March 2018, to paste price stickers on unsold packaged products to reflect new MRP post GST. After Goods and Services Tax (GST) became effective from July 1, companies were asked to use stickers on unsold packaged commodities to display new maximum retail price (MRP) till September, which was later extended till December, 2017.

Explanation: For the first time, WHO will add gaming disorder to its International Classification of Diseases (ICD).  The ICD — a diagnostic manual that’s published by the WHO — was last updated 27 years ago, in 1990. The 11th edition of the manual is due in 2018, and will include gaming disorder as a serious health condition to be monitored.

Explanation: According to Reserve Bank data, bad loans of Public sector banks (PSBs) stood at Rs 7.34 lakh crore by the end of second quarter (September 30) this fiscal, a bulk of which came from corporate defaulters. However, on the other hand private sector banks’ non- performing assets (NPAs) were considerably low at Rs 1.03 lakh crore by September 30.

Explanation: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has launched a biography based on chronicles of his early struggle and lesser known aspects of his life. Titled ‘Trivendra Ek Zindaginama – Khairasain ka Sooraj’, the book is written by a doctor named Nandan Singh Bisht.

Explanation: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jairam Thakur has been announced as the next Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh. He will succeed Virbhadra Singh, who is serving as the Chief Minister of Himachal since 2012.

Explanation:China’s domestically developed AG600, the world’s largest amphibious aircraft, performed its maiden flight on 24th December.

Explanation: To promote football in India, the Premier League has forged a partnership with Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh.  Premier Skills is a global coaching and referee development programme which uses football as a tool to engage and develop the skills of young people.

Explanation: A new LIGO gravitational wave detector to measure ripples in the fabric of space and time is set to be built in India by 2025, in collaboration with universities from across the globe. The LIGO detectors discovered the first gravitational waves produced by two giant merging blackholes last year. The research won a Nobel Prize in Physics this year.

Explanation: India’s first home-grown high purity gold reference standard – the Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravya (BND-4201) – was launched at the India Government Mint, Mumbai. BND-4201, which is the reference material for gold of ‘9999’ fineness (gold that is 99.99 per cent pure), will be beneficial to the consumers and public at large to ensure purity of gold.

Explanation: India is all set to get its first runway on a ‘sea bridge’ soon, as the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has been given a nod to extend Lakshadweep’s Agatti Airport.

Explanation: India finished runners-up after going down 1-0 to Bangladesh in the final of the SAFF U15 Women’s Championship in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Explanation: The country’s first AC local left Borivali station for its maiden journey to Churchgate in Mumbai on 25th December, 2017. The train had a good response and ran almost packed with passengers from 6-year-old to senior citizens enjoying the ride.

Explanation: The two-day Regional Conference on Good Governance and Replication of Best Practices concluded in Guwahati, Assam. The Conference is an effort to create a common platform to share experiences in the formulation and implementation of citizen centric governance, and improved public service delivery.

Explanation: Iconic Bengali actor Partha Mukhopadhyay has passed away after a cardiac arrest. He was 70.

Explanation: Karnataka’s capital city Bengaluru has become the first Indian city to have its own logo. The logo was designed by a design start-up and uses both English and Kannada alphabets. Adding that Bengaluru has a vibrant culture, the designers said, “We wanted the ‘Be’ and ‘u’ to stand out.”

Explanation: Home Ministry has released 167 crore rupees to nine states with international border for the development of infrastructure in forward areas. The states which will benefit include Rajasthan and Punjab, both having international border with Pakistan, and West Bengal and Assam, which share boundary with Bangladesh.

Explanation: A report by UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has said India will overtake France and UK to become world’s fifth-largest economy in 2018. China is likely to overtake the US as world’s largest economy in 2032, CEBR added.

Explanation: Uttar Pradesh government has launched a free household power connection scheme ‘Prakash hai to vikas hai’ for the poor in the state to mark former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birthday on 25th December. Under the news scheme the government has a target of covering 16 million by the end of 2018.

Explanation: The Government of India, along with the Government of Tamil Nadu signed a USD 318 million loan agreement with the World Bank, for the Tamil Nadu Irrigated Agriculture Modernization Project to promote climate resilient agriculture technologies, improve water management practices, and increase market opportunities for small and marginal farmers.

Explanation: An online platform, electronic-Human Resource Management System (e-HRMS), has been launched for central government employees to apply for leave and access their service-related information.

Explanation: The projected ₹4,000-crore pod taxi scheme — also known as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) — is a dream project of Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, and the NHAI has been mandated to execute it on Delhi-Gurgaon pilot corridor (12.3 km) from Delhi-Haryana border to Rajiv Chowk in Gurgaon on a PPP (public-private partnership) basis.

Explanation: India has provided medical assistance worth about $1 million to Yemen in response to a request from the Yemeni government. As part of its commitment to provide humanitarian assistance to Yemen, India has been a member of the ‘Friends of Yemen’ Group

Explanation: India’s largest mobile-first financial services platform, Paytm announced that its app has crossed the 100 million milestone on Google Play Store in the second week of December 2017.

Explanation: Saudi Arabia is hosting a world chess tournament for the first time. The tournament has been named as the King Salman World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships.

Explanation: Anushka Sharma. She has taken the title for her wide-reaching work for animals, from helping to protect dogs from fireworks to advocating for horses who are forced to pull carriages in Mumbai.

Explanation: Legendary South African musician Robbie Malinga has passed away. The veteran musician, who suffered from anaemia, announced his retirement as a solo artist in 2016, after more than 20 years in the industry.

Explanation: Veteran sports administrator Ashok Kumar Mattoo, who headed the national boxing and hockey federations at different times, has passed away after a prolonged illness.

Explanation: The Government has decided to make additional market borrowing of only 50,000 crore in the remaining period of the current fiscal year to meet expenditure. Finance Ministry said that there will be no change in the net borrowing as envisaged in the Budget for the current financial year.

Explanation: Aiming to start commercial seaplane operations before the 2019 general elections, the government is speeding up the process to frame norms for the mode of transport, and has decided to allow them under the regional connectivity scheme. It is also exploring the possibility of allowing single-engine planes.

Explanation: The government has reduced the interest rates on small saving schemes, including National Savings Certificates (NSCs), Public Provident Fund (PPF) and Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), by 0.2 percentage point for the fourth quarter of the fiscal (January-March).

Explanation: The interest rate on the one-year time deposit has been lowered to 6.6 percent for the fourth quarter of the fiscal (January-March) as compared to 6.8 percent in the October-December quarter, whereas the 2-year time deposit will now fetch a lower interest rate of 6.7 percent from 6.9 percent in the previous quarter.

Explanation: Noted ophthalmologist Dr Daljit Singh has passed away. Dr Daljit Singh was a surgeon, teacher, researcher, activist, poet and later even a politician.

Explanation: New interest rates for small saving schemes (for January-March) are:
Public Provident Fund (PPF) – 7.6%
National Savings Certificates (NSCs) – 7.6%
Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) – 7.3%
Senior Citizen’s Savings Scheme of five-year period – 8.3%

Explanation: Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio Infocomm (RJio) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire specified assets of debt-laden Reliance Communications (RCom) and affiliates, controlled by his younger sibling Anil Ambani. The deal is slated to bring relief to RCom which is reeling under debt of around ₹45,000 crore.

Explanation: The Indian banking sector has been classified under ‘Group 5’ along with countries such as Italy, Spain, Ireland, the UAE and South Africa by rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) on the basis of their economy and industry risk criteria. The other countries in group ‘5’ are Spain, Ireland, Italy, Panama, Bermuda, Poland, Peru, Qatar, South Africa and the UAE.

Explanation: The Government of India and World Bank have signed an agreement for IBRD Credit of USD 40 Million from World Bank for “U.P. Pro-Poor Tourism Development Project”.

Explanation: The 25th edition of National Children Science Congress (NCSC-2017) was held Gandhinagar, Gujarat from 27 to 31 December, 2017. The theme of NCSC-2017 was ‘Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development’ with the special focus on persons with disabilities.

Explanation: Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh has launched Livestock Disease Forewarning –Mobile Application (LDF-Mobile App). The app is developed by ICAR-National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (ICAR-NIVEDI), Bengaluru

Explanation: The former football star George Weah has won Liberia’s presidential election, defeating the vice-president, Joseph Boakai, in a runoff with 61.5% of the vote.

Explanation: US buyout giant KKR & Co has become the first foreign investor to fully own an asset reconstruction company (ARC) in India as it received approval from the Reserve Bank of India at a time when lenders are fighting with a pile of bad loans that have crippled their businesses.

Explanation: Finance minister Arun Jaitley has announced that despite the slowdown in 2016-17, as per the IMF, India was the fastest growing major economy in 2016 and second fastest growing major economy in 2017 in the world.

Explanation: The two-week long eighth edition of the Indo-Maldives joint military exercise, ‘Ekuverin’, came to an end at Belagavi, Karnataka. ‘Ekuverin’ means ‘friends’ in the Maldivian language. The exercise has been held alternatively in India and Maldives since 2009.

Explanation: India’s ace chess player Viswanathan Anand won the World Rapid Chess tournament title in Saudi Arabia by beating Russia’s Vladimir Fedoseev 2-0 in a two-game tie-break. Saudi Arabia hosted the world chess tournament for the first time.

Explanation: According to a report by CARE Ratings, India has the highest level of non-performing assets (NPA) among BRICS countries and is ranked 5th on a list of countries with the highest levels of NPAs. The only countries ranked higher than India on the list are Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland in order

Explanation: Cholamandalam MS General Insurance Company Limited has been awarded the prestigious “Golden Peacock Award for Risk Management” for the year 2017. 

Explanation: The Centre has sanctioned 1250 crore rupees for the development of transport sector of Assam. This is Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Ministry’s decision to provide financial assistance for the all-round development of the inland transport sector of the state.

Explanation: Coming to the rescue of ailing banks, the Centre has pumped in capital of ₹7,577 crore in 6 weak public sector banks. Bank of India, IDBI Bank, Uco Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Dena Bank and Central Bank of India have received equity through preferential issue of shares with two of them informing stock exchanges about the decision.

Explanation: The three-day long 78th session of the Indian History Congress has begun at the Jadavpur University campus in Kolkata. The aim of conducting the Indian History Congress is for promotion and encouragement of the scientific study of Indian History, holding Congresses and publishing proceedings, bulletins, memoirs, journals and other works

Explanation: Allahabad Bank has entered into an agreement with state-run National e-Governance Services Limited (NeSL) for utilizing the latter’s Information Utility Services envisaged under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. NeSL, owned by the government, is the first Information Utility entity registered by Insolvency and bankruptcy Board of India under IBBI (IU) Regulations, 2017.

Explanation: Centre told Parliament that the revenue loss to states on account of GST implementation was Rs 24,500 crore between July-October and the Centre has released compensation to make up for it. As per the details of GST compensation released to states as on November 30, Karnataka got maximum compensation from the Centre at Rs 3,271 crore, followed by Gujarat (Rs 2,282 crore) and Punjab (Rs 2,098 crore).

Explanation: The government has approved ₹4,066 crore for providing internet connectivity to people in all gram panchayats under BharatNet project. The government is rolling BharatNet project to provide high-speed broadband connectivity at gram panchayat (GP) levels. The government plans to connect all GPs with high-speed broadband by March 2019.

Explanation: Telangana is going to create history by becoming the first state in the country offering free power to farmers 24 hours a day. Farmers in Telangana will get 24-hour free power supply from the midnight of December 31.

Explanation: Nirmala Sitharaman has launched a start-up incubation centre called the Centre for Entrepreneurship Opportunities and Learning (CEOL) in Mangaluru, Karnataka. She has allocated Rs. 1.5 crore from her MPLAD (Member of Parliament’s Local Area Development) scheme for the development of CEOL.

Explanation: Manipur Central University, Imphal, will host the 105th Session of the Indian Science Congress during March 18-22, 2018. The session was to be held during the traditional January 3-7 dates at Osmania University in Hyderabad. However, it was postponed by the ISCA last week as circumstances in the campus were found not to be conducive to organise the session.

Explanation: Indian golfer Shiv Kapur won the Royal Cup at Pattaya, Thailand, which is his third Asian Tour title of 2017.