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31 May 2022
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Weekly Current Affairs

1. RBI’s new monetary policy review

Recently a meeting of the 'Monetary Policy Committee was held. In this monetary policy review, for the first time after May 2020, RBI has changed the monetary policy rates.

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has raised the policy repo rate by 40 basis points to 4.40% and raised the cash reserve ratio (CRR) of banks by 50 basis points to 4.5% with immediate effect

Key Point

 Repo Rate: 4.40%
 Reverse Repo Rate: 3.35%
 Marginal Standing Facility (MSF): 4.65%
 Bank Rate: 4.65%
 CRR: 4.50%
 SLR: 18%
Monetary Policy committee
 June 27, 2016
 Formed under the Finance Act, 2016
 To make interest rate-setting more relevant and transparent
 Six members : 3 from RBI + 3 appointed by the central government
 RBI Governor ex-officio committee
 RBI Deputy Governor in charge of the committee

Target

 Maintaining price stability while keeping in view the economic growth
 According to the RBI Act, 1934, the Government of India in consultation with the RBI will fix the inflation target once in every 5 years.
 According to the ‘consumer price Index’ (CPI), the central government has set it at 4 (+ or 2) percent for the period August, 2017 to March 31, 2022.

2 . State of the world’s Forest Report, 2022

Why in News?

Recently the State of the world’s forests 2022 (SOFO, 2022) Report was released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Highlights of the report

Forests cover an area of 4.06 billion hectares of the Earth’s geographical area. Between 1990 and 2020, 420 million hectares of forests have been destroyed due to deforestation.

An estimated 289 million hectares of deforestation in the tropics alone will be deforested between 2016 and 2050, resulting in emissions of 169 GtCO2e if additional action is not taken.

Greenhouse gas totals are expressed as billion tonnes based on global annual CO2 equivalent emissions (GtCo2e/year)

Increase in infectious diseases Of the 250 emerging infectious diseases, 15% are associated with forests. Example – Covid-19, drug-resistant infection, Zika virus, etc.

Deforestation and land-use change can be attributed to 30% of new diseases reported since 1960.

Rise in poverty level Estimates of the cost of global pandemic containment strategies based on curbing illegal wildlife trade, avoiding land-use change, and increasing surveillance rose by US$22 billion to US$31 billion.

More than 124 million people fell into extreme poverty following COVID-19 and increased use of wood-based fuels in some countries during the pandemic, which could have long-term effects.

Consumption of natural resources The world population is projected to reach 9.7 billion by the year 2050, which will increase competition for land, as the demand for food for this large population will increase by 35 to 56% by the year 2050.

GDP dependency on forests More than half of the world’s GDP (US$84.4 trillion in 2020) depends on minimum (US$31 trillion per year) and maximum (US$13 trillion per year) on ecosystem services provided by forests.

Global Report on Food Crisis 2022

Why in New?

Recently an annual report titled global Report on Food Crisis 2022 was released by the Global Network Against Food Crisis (GNAFC).

Global Network Against Food Crisis

The Global Report on the Food Crisis is a flagship report of the Global Network Against Food Crisis, which is published each year under the auspices of the Food Safety Information Network.
The Global Network Against Food Crisis was established in 2016 by the European Union, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the World Food Program (WFP).
It is a coalition of activists working together to support Sustainable Development Goal-2 (SDG-2) to prevent the food crisis and end hunger.

Food Safety Information Network

The Food Security Information Network is a global initiative of the food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program WFP). Focused on food security and nutrition on a global scale.