QUIZ – 2017: Insights Current Affairs Quiz, 15 May 2017

Solution: b.

“South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, who is Dinka, claimed the conflict had originated in a coup attempt, and laid the blame for it at the feet of his former vice president, Riek Machar. Machar, a Nuer, leveled damning accusations of his own: Kiir had not only fabricated the coup plot in order to kill him, Machar declared, but also had in mind a genocide of the Nuer.”

South Sudan’s many rebellions;

NatGeo (2014): How the world’s youngest nation descended into bloody civil war;

Solution: d.

• In the revised series, WPI will continue to constitute three Major Groups namely Primary  Articles, Fuel  &  Power  and  Manufactured Products. There are changes though to their weights in the index.
• A new “WPI Food Index” will be compiled ( combining the  “Food  Articles” under  “Primary  Articles” and  “Food  Products”  under  “Manufactured Products”) to capture the rate of inflation in food items. Additionally, seasonality of fruits and vegetables has been updated to account for more months as these are now available for longer duration.
• Item level aggregates for new WPI are compiled using Geometric Mean (GM) following international best practice and as is currently used for compilation of All India CPI.
• A high level Technical Review Committee has been set up for the first time to carry out dynamic review process in order to keep pace with the changing structure of the economy.

PIB: Revision of base year of All-India WPI;

Solution: d.

• India recently (13^th May, 2017) rolled out the long-awaited anti-pneumonia vaccine as part of the government’s Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP).
• The vaccine will protect children against severe forms of pneumococcal disease, such as pneumonia and meningitis.
• Pneumococcal disease is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths in children under five years of age globally and in India. India accounts for nearly 20% of global pneumonia deaths in this age group.

TH: Pneumonia vaccine to be part of immunisation drive;

PIB;

Solution: c.

• In the new series of WPI, prices used for compilation do not include indirect taxes in order to remove impact of fiscal policy. This is in consonance with international practices and will make the new WPI conceptually closer to ‘Producer Price Index’.
• According to Investopedia, “the Producer Price index is a family of indexes that measures the average change in selling prices received by domestic producers of goods and services over time. PPIs measure price change from the perspective of the seller and differs from other indexes, such as the Consumer Price Index, that measure price change from the purchaser’s perspective.”
• According to the definition provided in this document (Q21 & 22, Pg17)of the Office of Economic Adviser, “PPI measures the average change in the price of goods and services either as they leave the place of production, called output PPI or as they enter the production process, called input PPI.”

Source and Improvisaiton: PIB: Revision of base year of All-India WPI;

Solution: c.

The Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion will chair the TRC for facilitating dynamic revision of the WPI, and Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation will chair the TRC for facilitating dynamic revision of the IIP.

PIB: Annex 2, Revision of base year of All-India WPI;

PIB: Revision of base year of All-India IIP;

Solution: b.

• The Pacific Alliance is a regional integration initiative formed by Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru on April 28, 2011.
• Its main purpose is for members to form a regional trading bloc and forge stronger economic ties with the Asia-Pacific region.
• India is an Observer Member to the alliance.
• In the news – Expansion of India-Chile PTA: “Keeping in view that Chile is the founding member of the Pacific Alliance to which India is an Observer Member, implementing the expanded PTA could deepen its engagement with the emerging trade bloc.”