Banking, Financial and Economic Awareness of 9 and 10 February 2021

By PendulumEdu | Last Modified: 18 Feb 2021 16:28 PM IST

Main Headlines:

Topic: Infrastructure and Energy

1. South Korea signs agreement to build world’s largest offshore wind farm.

South Korea has signed a 48 trillion won ($43 billion) agreement to build world’s largest offshore wind farm near Sinan in its southwest.
After signing the deal, Government of South Korea announced that it intends to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm by 2030. It will have a maximum capacity of 8.2 gigawatts.
As per President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, this offshore wind farm will be bigger than the world’s current largest offshore wind farm.
President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in last year announced the goal of achieving carbon neutrality (net zero carbon dioxide emissions) by 2050.
South Korea aims to become one of the world’s top five offshore wind energy powerhouses by 2030. It also aims to reduce the number of nuclear power plants from 24 to 17 by 2034.
Sinan is a county (administrative division) in Jeonnam or South Jeolla province of South Korea. Won (South Korean won) is the official currency of South Korea.
Hornsea 1 in UK is the world’s largest offshore wind farm as of January 2020. It has a capacity of 1.12 GW.

Topic: Appointments

Bikram Singh Bedi has been appointed as Managing Director of the Indian business of Google Cloud.
He will succeed Karan Bajwa. Karan Bajwa was last week promoted as Vice President of Google Cloud in Asia Pacific.
In March 2020, Google announced that it would next year open its second cloud region in Delhi in India. It launched its first cloud region in Mumbai in 2017.

Topic: Corporates/Companies

PhonePe has collaborated with Axis Bank to offer PhonePe users an opportunity to generate multiple UPI IDs with Axis Bank’s “@axl” handle.
This model allowing users to generate and use multiple UPI IDs is called Unified Payments Interface (UPI) multi-bank model.
In June 2020, ICICI Bank became the second partner of PhonePe after Yes Bank. This allowed Phone Pay users to generate and use UPI IDs with ICICI bank’s @ibl handle.
PhonePe and Yes Bank had collaborated to launch India’s first UPI based mobile payments app.
According to National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data, PhonePe had top position in UPI market share in January 2021. It was responsible for 42% of UPI market alone.
Google Pay and Paytm Payments Bank stood at second and third position after PhonePe.

Topic: Banking System

ICICI Bank and Japan’s MUFG Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to work together to meet the banking needs of Japanese corporates in India.
Vishakha Mulye, Executive Director of ICICI Bank, signed an MoU at a virtual event with an official of MUFG Bank.
MUFG Bank is the largest bank in Japan. ICICI Bank (ICICI Bank Limited) is a private sector bank. Girish Chandra Chaturvedi is chairman of its board of directors. Its MD & CEO is Sandeep Bakhshi.

Topic: Banking/Financial Schemes

RBI published the annual report of its Ombudsman Schemes for 2019-20 on 08 February.
As per the report, the receipts of complaints under three Ombudsman Schemes has seen an increase of nearly 65%.
The complaints received by offices of Banking Ombudsman were mainly related to ATM/Debit Cards and Mobile/Electronic banking.
Complaints received by Digital Transactions Ombudsmen were mainly about fund transfer.
In its Monetary Policy Statement on 5 February, RBI had announced that it would integrate three Ombudsman Schemes and launch Integrated Ombudsman Scheme in June 2021.
RBI’s Ombudsman Schemes for grievance redressal:
- The three Ombudsman Schemes are Banking Ombudsman Scheme of 2006, Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies of 2018 and Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions 2019.
- RBI had notified Banking Ombudsman Scheme for the first time in 1995. RBI administers Banking Ombudsman Scheme through 22 offices of Banking Ombudsman. All states and UTS are covered under the scheme.