Top Best Current Affairs 31 March 2020 (2)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stated that the schemes for the merger of 10 state-run banks into four lenders will come into force from 1st April. RBI also stated that the branches of merging banks will operate as of the banks in which the banks have been amalgamated. The banks sought to defer the merger schemes of lenders due to the lockdown triggered by coronavirus outbreak.

GoI has extended the benefit of 2% Interest Subvention (IS) to Banks and 3% Prompt Repayment Incentive (PRI) to all farmers up to 31 May 2020. The extension is applicable to the crop loans up to Rs.3 lakh given by banks which have become due or are becoming due between 1 March and 31 May 2020. The move comes in the wake of lockdown due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

DheeYantra, the pioneers in Indian languages NLP and conversational AI, has launched "Aham!", a virtual assistant. The chatbot was developed to provide answers to the concerns on the COVID-19 crisis. Aham! is released in 7 Indian languages namely Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil, in addition to English.

The United Nations Trade report titled "The COVID-19 Shock to Developing Countries: Towards a whatever it takes program" stated that the world economy will go into recession in 2020 with a predicted loss of trillions of dollars of global income due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also predicted serious problems for developing countries with the likely exception of India and China.

The Punjab National Bank (PNB) has launched a new logo before the mega merger of the bank with the United Bank of India (UBI) and the Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC) comes into force from 1 April, 2020. The new logo will have signages of all the 3 banks.

Tata Power Company's joint venture (JV) with Norway's Clean Energy Invest (CEI), and International Financial Corporation (IFC) began its commercial operation of a 178 megawatt (MW) hydropower project (HPP) in Georgia. The information was given by the Tata group utility on 30 March.

On March 30, 2020, the Asian Development Bank announced that it is to invest 100 million USD in National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF). The investment during an economic slow down is a great boost for the Indian Economy.

The National Health Commission of China published a list of recommended treatments to treat COVID-19. Apart from western medicine and Chinese medicine, the list included Tan Re Qing, injections that contain bear bile powder. Tan Re Qing is secreted by the liver and stored in the gallbladder of the bear. The bile from various species of bears, including Asiatic black bears and brown bears, has been used as a traditional Chinese medicine since the 8th century.