29 September 2015 Current Affairs
Centre launches Green Highways policy
The Central government flagged off its Green Highways (Plantation, Transplantation, Beuatification and Maintenance) policy 2015 on 29 September. The aim of this policy is to help the environment, help local communities and generate employment by planting trees along all the highways in the country. The target for the first year is to cover 6,000 Km of highways. The Green Highways policy will help in making India pollution free.
Reserve Bank cut Repo rate by 0.5 %
The governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan on 29 September cut the benchmark repurchase rate by 50 basis points. RBI has cut it’s key rate by 0.5 % bringing it down to 6.75%, the lowest in four and half years. Loans will get cheaper and hike consumer spending. CRR remains unchanged at 4%. GDP growth forecast for 2015-16 lowered to 7.4 %. Growth likely to pick up in later part of this fiscal. RBI to issue final guidelines on base rate computation by November end. With the cut in the RBI’s Repo rate, State Bank of India (SBI) reduced its key lending rate by 40 bps to 9.3 percent. Andhra Bank and Bank of India also reduced their base rate by 25 bps. The present rates of RBI are : CRR – 4%, Repo rate – 6.75%, Reverse Repo rate – 5.75%.