02 September 2019: PIB Summary & Analysis

Read the daily PIB update and stay up-to-date on current affairs for the UPSC exam.

September 2nd, 2019 PIB:-Download PDF Here

Session of the Executive Board of A-WEB

Context

• Chief Election Commissioner of India spoke to the Extraordinary Session of the Executive Board of Association of World Election Bodies in Bengaluru.

AWEB

• The Association of World Election Bodies, commonly referred to as ‘A-WEB,’ is the first global organization of election management bodies, and the membership currently consists of 97 organizations from 94 countries.
• The association was founded to support the democracies achieve good governance and socio-economic improvements that are sustained under political stability.
• AWEB supports each EMBs’ (Electoral Management Bodies) capacity building efforts.
• The organisation also plans and implements country programs to improve electoral democracy and works in collaboration with other international bodied to spread democratic election systems.

India and AWEB

• Election Commission of India had been closely associated with the formation process of the A-WEB and was one of the founding members of AWEB in October 2013.
• India has been member of the Executive Board since 2013 and took over as Vice-Chair of AWEB since 2017.
• India continues to promote AWEB’s mission wholeheartedly to promote partnership among Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) around the world.

India takes over COP Presidency from China

Context

• Union Minister for Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), and Executive Secretary, UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), jointly inaugurated the 14th Conference of Parties (COP14) to UNCCD.

About Conference of the Parties (COP)

• The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
• All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, at which they review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention.
• A key task for the COP is to review the national communications and emission inventories submitted by Parties.
• Based on this information, the COP assesses the effects of the measures taken by Parties and the progress made in achieving the ultimate objective of the Convention.

About India and COP 14

• the Indian union Environment Minister who is also the elected COP President for next two years, expressed India’s resounding commitment to finding a long-term solution for minimizing the impact of desertification and land degradation.
• India being the global host for COP 14 will take over the COP Presidency from China for the next two years till 2021.
• Through hosting COP 14, India will highlight its leadership in navigating the land management agenda at global level. It will also provide a stage to mainstream sustainable land management in country’s national development policies.
• The objective of the COP 14, is to discuss on various issues of land such as sustainable land management, reversing land degradation, mitigating drought, halting desertification, addressing sand and dust storms, linkages with gender, tenure, etc.

About UNCCD

• United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was adopted in Paris on June 1994 and ratified by 196 countries & European Union.
• This convention can be called as “Mother convention” of the other two Rio Conventions that emerged as a major outcome of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit viz. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Steering Committee on Fintech related issues

Context

• The Steering Committee on Fintech related issues constituted by the Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs, submitted its Final Report.

About Fintech companies

• Financial technology (Fintech) is used to describe new tech that seeks to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. ​​​
• At its core, fintech is utilized to help companies, business owners and consumers better manage their financial operations, processes, and lives by utilizing specialized software and algorithms that are used on computers and, increasingly, smartphones.
• Fintech, the word, is a combination of “financial technology”.
• When fintech emerged in the 21st Century, the term was initially applied to the technology employed at the back-end systems of established financial institutions.
• Fintech now includes different sectors and industries such as education, retail banking, fundraising and nonprofit, and investment management to name a few.

About the recommendations

• The report outlines the current landscape in the Fintech space globally and in India, studies the various issues relating to its development and makes recommendations focusing on how fintech can be leveraged to enhance financial inclusion of MSMEs.
• The Committee report also identifies application areas and use cases in Governance and financial services and suggests regulatory upgrades enabling fintech innovations.
• The Committee has recommended that the RBI may consider development of a cash-flow based financing for MSMEs.
• It has also recommended that Insurance companies and lending agencies to be encouraged to use drone and remote sensing technology for crop area, damage and location assessments to support risk reduction in insurance/lending business.
• The Committee has highlighted the positive impact of Fintech innovations on sectors such as Agriculture and MSMEs.
• And it has recommended NABARD to take immediate steps to create a credit registry for farmers with special thrust for use of fintech along with core banking solutions (CBS) by agri-financial institutions, included Cooperative societies.
• The Committee recommends a special drive for modernisation and standardisation of land records by setting up a dedicated National Digital Land Records Mission based on a common National Land Records Standards with involvement of State Land and Registration departments.
• The Committee also recommends a comprehensive legal framework for consumer protection be put in place early keeping in mind the rise of fintech and digital services.
• It has also recommended adoption of Regulation technology (or RegTech) by all financial sector regulators to develop standards and facilitate adoption by financial sector service providers to adopt use-cases making compliance with regulations easier, quicker and effective.
• Similarly, it has also recommended that financial sector regulators develop an institutional framework for specific use-cases of Supervisory technology (or SupTech), testing, deployment, monitoring and evaluation.

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