Economics – Medium Level – GK Questions

Transfer payments are unilateral, one-way payments where no current productive service or good is rendered in return. Since National Income only accounts for the value of newly produced goods and services (factor incomes), including transfer payments would result in double counting and misrepresent the actual productive capacity of the economy.

While GDP measures the value of goods and services produced within a country's geographical boundaries regardless of nationality, GNP measures the total value produced by the residents of a country, both domestically and abroad. Therefore, GNP = GDP + (Factor income earned by domestic residents abroad - Factor income earned by foreign residents domestically).

The eight core industries are Coal, Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Refinery Products, Fertilizers, Steel, Cement, and Electricity. Textiles, despite being a major employment-generating sector, is not classified as a 'core' infrastructure industry for the purpose of the IIP's leading indicator metrics.

The base year for the IIP was updated from 2004-05 to 2011-12 in May 2017 to align it with the base years of other major macroeconomic indicators like the GDP and WPI. This update also revised the item basket to better reflect the current structure of the Indian manufacturing and industrial sectors.

While the FDI limit in the defense sector was raised to 100%, the automatic route is only permitted up to 74%. Any FDI beyond 74% (up to 100%) requires prior approval from the Government of India through the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), primarily on national security grounds.

The 2020 revision eliminated the distinction between manufacturing and service sectors and significantly hiked the investment and turnover limits. A Micro enterprise is now defined as one where the investment in plant and machinery or equipment does not exceed Rs. 1 Crore, and the annual turnover does not exceed Rs. 5 Crore.

The NFSA, 2013, marks a paradigm shift from a welfare approach to a rights-based approach to food security. It mandates coverage of up to 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population (averaging about 67% of India's total population), providing them with 5 kg of food grains per person per month at heavily subsidized prices.

The Model APMC Act of 2003 was actually drafted to liberalize the agricultural marketing sector. It encouraged states to allow private markets, direct purchase centers, and contract farming, aiming to break the monopoly of traditional APMC mandis and provide farmers with more avenues to sell their produce competitively.

e-NAM is a pan-India electronic trading portal that networks the existing Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) mandis. By enabling online bidding and transparent price discovery, it aims to break down interstate trade barriers, ensure farmers get better remunerative prices, and reduce the influence of middlemen.

NABARD is primarily an apex refinancing agency and a development bank. It does not provide direct retail loans to individual farmers. Instead, it refinances State Cooperative Agriculture and Rural Development Banks (SCARDBs), State Cooperative Banks (StCBs), and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), which in turn lend directly to the rural populace.

NABARD was set up on July 12, 1982, to replace the Agricultural Credit Department (ACD) and Rural Planning and Credit Cell (RPCC) of the RBI, along with the Agricultural Refinance and Development Corporation (ARDC). The Shivaraman Committee recommended a single, dedicated apex institution to oversee and refinance rural credit delivery in India.

Stand-Up India facilitates bank loans between Rs. 10 lakh and Rs. 1 crore to at least one Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) borrower and at least one woman borrower per bank branch. The goal is to foster inclusive economic growth by supporting greenfield enterprises in the non-farm sector.

The S.S. Tarapore Committee (1997 and 2006) outlined the prerequisites and timeline for moving towards fuller capital account convertibility (FCAC). It recommended building adequate forex reserves, lowering the fiscal deficit, and reducing inflation before fully opening the capital account to global markets.

Capital account convertibility pertains to the freedom to move capital across borders for investments (like buying foreign stocks or real estate). While India has full Current Account convertibility (for trade in goods/services), it maintains partial restrictions on the Capital Account to prevent volatile hot money flows from destabilizing the economy.

The Twin Deficit hypothesis suggests a strong link between a government's budget deficit (fiscal deficit) and the country's external trade deficit (CAD). High government borrowing increases domestic demand, which spills over into higher imports, thereby widening the Current Account Deficit.

SDRs are strictly an international reserve asset used by the IMF and member countries' central banks to settle balance of payments deficits or supplement official reserves. Private entities and individuals cannot hold or transact in SDRs; they must be exchanged for hard currencies first.

The IMF uses a quota system based on a country's GDP, openness, economic variability, and international reserves. This quota determines how much the country must contribute to the IMF, its voting weight on the Executive Board, and the maximum financing it can access.

The IBRD raises funds on international capital markets by issuing AAA-rated bonds and lends to middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries for specific development projects. The poorest nations, who cannot afford IBRD rates, rely on the concessional loans from the International Development Association (IDA).

The NSO (under MoSPI) releases the IIP data with a lag of six weeks from the reference month. It measures the short-term growth of a basket of industrial products, with manufacturing accounting for the vast majority (over 77%) of its total weight.

The Gadgil Study Group, along with the Nariman Committee, recommended the Lead Bank Scheme. Under this, a specific bank (usually with a large branch network) is assigned the role of a consortium leader for each district to coordinate the efforts of all credit institutions and identify local investment potential.