Daily Mains Practice Questions 06-03-2023

KEY POINTS

·        The decision of the Government of India to suspend the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence of the country’s premier think tank, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) is bad in optics and substance.

·        An eagerness to drag the prestigious institution into a quagmire of legal processes is writ large over this entire exercise.

·        The CPR has been working on improving governance and enhancing state capacity among other things, in collaboration with governments, and the public and private sectors.

·        India’s New Education Policy envisages academic exchanges and cooperation between Indian and global institutions to raise the standard of higher education and research in the country.

·        India also wants to emerge as a centre of technological excellence and manufacturing. Recently, two Australian universities announced their plans to have campuses in India.

·        Restrictions on all these for national security reasons are part of the rule everywhere, and are acceptable.

·        But these are to be exercised sparingly. To assume that Indian thinking should be insulated from foreign ones, while seeking international technology and capital inflow at the same time is a paradox.

·        At any rate, for a country growing as fast as India, a massive expansion in capacity for research is the need of the hour.

KEY POINTS

·        The quantum of tariff is worrying. CBAM may translate into average taxes ranging from 20-35 per cent on iron, steel, and aluminium products.

·        This is far above the average 2.2 per cent bound tariffs agreed by the EU at the WTO for manufacturers. High CBAM tariffs will render WTO and FTA commitments meaningless.

·        The EU seeks to achieve 55 per cent lower carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. It wants to be carbon-neutral by 2050.

·        Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) is the EU’s instrument for achieving these goals.

·        It monitors emissions from over 10,000 power stations, oil refineries, iron, steel, aluminium, cement, paper, glass factories, and civil aviation.

·        It decided to gradually phase out the free allowances from most polluting sectors and simultaneously introduce CBAM to prevent the relocation of industries or carbon leakage in these sectors.

·        CBAM will be a significant challenge for India’s metal sector. India’s 27 per cent exports of iron ore pellets, iron, steel, and aluminium products of value $8.2 billion in CY 2022 went to the EU.

·        The EU is unleashing CBAM as the Climate Trojan Horse. It may not improve the environment, but it surely will disrupt global trade in a big way.

KEY POINTS

·        The average monthly GST collections in the first 11 months of 2022-23 now stand at Rs 1,49,776 crore, 21.5% higher.

·        The spike in these months can be attributed to quarter-end and year-end return filings whose taxes are collected in the first month of the subsequent quarter.

·        The first 10 months of this fiscal had seen revenues from goods imports rising 29%, while domestic transactions and services imports yielded a 22% uptick in taxes.

·        While this is in tune with a sharp dip in imports in January, it also signals a likely cooling of discretionary domestic demand that had been driving up the import bill along with elevated commodity prices.

·        That domestic revenue trends are uneven, with sharp variations across States, is another cause for concern.

·        The 2023-24 Budget expects GST revenue growth to slow from about 22% this year to 12%, with tax buoyancy expected to drop.

·        That represents a pragmatic outlook amid a world tightening its belt for a slowdown, but the Finance Ministry’s attempt to play up February’s GST.

·        As these revenues pertained to transactions undertaken over the 31 days of January. By this logic, March should see a dip in tax inflows as February had fewer days of activity.