How much did UN owe India for peacekeeping operations?

Syndicate Bank and BEML Limited (Bharat Earth Movers Limited) have signed an agreement for financing Earth Moving and Construction Equipment which is manufactured by BEML. Also, it will facilitate the availability of loans and address the growing demand for higher capacity equipment in the Mining Industry.Under this agreement, the customers will be provided loans in the range of Rs 20 Lakh to Rs 300 Lakh and preferential pricing by Syndicate Bank. Also, Syndicate Bank and BEML expect to book business worth Rs.100 crore by March 2020.

Artificial Intelligence based HR solutions provider, Talocity will provide Yes Bank its touchless technology in hiring process for Yes bank. This is done to enhance the hiring process with unbiased HR outcomes and to attain high-quality talent. In the process of recruitment, candidates are interviewed by an AI bot on a one-way video platform. Talocity's machine learning and AI capabilities will create personality report of each job applicant. This creates a unique evaluation platform which is effective without any human involvement and helpful in large volume hiring.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) notified that Exim Bank has proffered soft loans worth 266.6$ million to Rwanda for various projects. The funding for the projects has been done in 3 distinct tranches. The projects are for supporting agricultural projects; for the development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs); for financing road projects in Rwanda. Exim Bank, according to the agreement will provide $100 million to finance the development of 2 SEZs, as well as for the expansion of the Kigali SEZ in Rwanda.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has turned down IDBI Bank's proposal to change its name following the transfer of a controlling 51% stake to LIC, insurance behemoth, from the government of India. The board of IDBI Bank had, last month, sought the RBI's approval for a change in the name of the lender to either LIC IDBI Bank or LIC Bank following the takeover by Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). However, RBI did not elaborate on the reasons for denial by the regulator for changing the name.

State-owned Bank of India (BoI) raised Rs.660.80 crore by issuing shares to employees under Employee Share Purchase Scheme (ESPS). The bank issued 6,25,52,188 shares of Rs.10 each to eligible employees. The Bank offered a discount of 24.28% on the applicable price to the employees and about 94.70% of total employees participated.

According to a recent Asian Development Bank's (ADB) report titled 'Asian Development Outlook 2019: Strengthening Disaster Resilience', around 26 trillion dollars from 2016 to 2030, or 1.7 trillion dollars investment needed per year to build disaster-resilient infrastructure in Asia. Asian Development Outlook 2019.This is because Developing economies across Asia are among the most vulnerable to natural disasters and have suffered damages of around 644 billion dollars since 2000.Of these, approx 507 billion dollars wasted for weather-related hazards while the remaining 137 billion dollars wasted for geophysical hazards.

The Reserve Bank set the average base rate to be charged from borrowers by non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and micro-finance institutions (MFIs) at 9.21% for the first quarter of the next fiscal (April-June). The regulator in February 2014 had issued directions to NBFC-MFIs regarding pricing of credit.

Kotak Mahindra Bank (Kotak) stated that it will charge customers for UPI transactions starting 1st of May 2019. For each Kotak Bank account, the first 30 UPI fund transfers will be free after which a charge will be levied on all fund transfers from the bank account. This will be applicable across all platforms, including Paytm, PhonePe, Google Pay or Truecaller Pay among others. The bank will charge Rs 2.50 per transaction for an amount value below or equal to Rs 1,000, and Rs 5 per transaction will be levied for a payment value above Rs 1,000.

Global card payments brand Mastercard has announced its plan of investing $1 billion in India operations over the period of next 5 years. About $350 million of the total amount would be invested in setting up a local payments processing center as per the Reserve Bank of India's mandate to store all payments data locally. The rest of the investment will go towards existing services and expanding capacity among others. This is the first such processing center of the company outside of the US and could provide service markets such as Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has divested its entire stake in National Housing Bank (NHB) and the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) for Rs 1,450 crore and Rs 20 crore, respectively. The move is part of ending the cross-holding in regulatory institutions and follows the recommendation of second Narasimham committee report of October 2001 and the RBI's own discussion paper on the same entitled 'Harmonizing the role and operations of development financial institutions and banks. The current change in the capital structure of both these financial institutions was brought in by the government through amendments to the Nabard Act of 1981 and the NHB Act of 1987 which were notified on January 19, 2018 and March 29, 2018, respectively. With this, the Government of India (GoI) now holds 100% stake in both these financial institutions.