Current Affairs - Economy & Infrastructure

India broke into the top 10 list of agricultural produce exporters in 2019 with a sizeable share in the export of rice, cotton, soya beans and meat, according to a World Trade Organization (WTO) report on the trends in world agricultural trade in the past 25 years.

• In 2019, Mexico and India, with 3.4% and 3.1% share in global agri exports, respectively, replaced Malaysia (7th) and New Zealand (9th) as the largest exporters, while the US, which topped the list in 1995 (22.2%), was overtaken by the European Union in 2019 (16.1%).
• The US’s share fell to 13.8% in 2019.
• Brazil maintained its ranking as the third largest exporter, increasing its share from 4.8% in 1995 to 7.8% in 2019.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recently commemorated 6 years of the three transformative Urban Missions:

1. Smart Cities Mission (SCM)
2. Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and
3. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U)

India’s banana exports grew both in terms of volume as well as value from 1.34 lakh metric tonne valued at Rs 413 crore in 2018-19 to 1.95 lakh metric tonne valued at Rs 660 crore in 2019-20. During 2020-21 (April-February), India has exported banana worth of 1.91 lakh tonne valued at Rs 619 crore.

According to the World Investment Report 2021 released by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), India was the fifth-largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in the world in 2020.

The country received USD 64 billion FDI in 2020, which is an increase of 27 per cent, over USD 51 billion inflows in 2019.

The MSME sector is an important sector of the Indian economy.

• As per the Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics & PI, share of MSME Gross Value Added (GVA) in All India Gross Domestic Product at current prices (2011-12) for the year 2018-19 and 2019-20 were 30.5% and 30.0% respectively.