INDIA
– CDS (Chief of Defence Staff) General Bipin Rawat and 13 others die in crash of IAF helicopter Mi 17 V-5 near Coonoor in Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu
– Parliament passes Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2021
– Rajya Sabha passes Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2020
– DRDO test fires air version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from Sukhoi 30 MK-I aircraft
– NMCG (National Mission for Clean Ganga) and c-Ganga (Centre for Ganga River Basin Management and Studies) organising India Water Impact Summit from Dec 9 to 14
– Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo wins Jnanpith award for 2022; Assamese writer Nilmani Phookan wins for 2021
MONETARY POLICY HIGHLIGHTS
– The Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on December 8, 2021 announced that the Monetary Policy Committee had opted to keep the rates unchanged in its latest meet.
– Repo and reverse repo rates currently stand at 4 per cent and 3.35 per cent, respectively.
– MPC retained an accommodative stance to support & sustain growth
– Projection for real GDP growth is retained at 9.5% in FY22
– CPI (consumer price index) inflation projection retained at 5.3% during FY22
– RBI to continue using variable rate reverse repo operations to absorb funds. RBI to conduct a VRRR (variable reverse repo rate) auction of Rs 6.5 lakh crore on December 17 and Rs 7.5 lakh crore on December 31
– RBI proposes to launch UPI-based payment products for feature phone users
– UPI transaction limit to be hiked to Rs 5 lakh from current limit of Rs 2 lakh. UPI transaction limit hike only for retail direct scheme for investment of G-Secs and IPO offering applications
– RBI will soon release discussion paper on charges on digital payments in India
ECONOMY & CORPORATE
– RBI retains three-member Advisory Committee of crisis-ridden Reliance Capital comprising Sanjeev Nautiyal, Srinivasan Varadarajan and Praveen P Kadle
– Cabinet approves continuation of Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana – Gramin (PMAY-G) beyond March 2021 till March 2024
– Cabinet approves Rs. 44,605 crores ‘Ken-Betwa Interlinking of Rivers Project’ to benefit Bundelkhand region of MP and UP
– Suresh Jadhav, key executive of SII (Serum Institute of India) & doyen of vaccine industry, dies at 72 in Pune
– Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman ranked 37th in list of ‘world’s 100 most powerful women’ by Forbes
– IndiGo signs agreement with Dehradun-based Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP) to manufacture and deploy sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) globally
– Indian edtech company Byju’s acquires Austria-headquartered GeoGebra
WORLD
– Germany: Olaf Scholz replaces Angela Merkel as chancellor
– Japan’s Yusaku Maezawa & Yozo Hirano take off for International Space Station on Russian Soyuz rocket; first self-paying space tourists since 2009
– SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) Charter Day observed on Dec 8
