13th January 2021 Current Affairs

1. The New Foreign Trade Policy 2021-26 will be brought into effect from April 1, 2021. This was decided during the meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
2. The global stockpile of Ebola vaccines is being created in Switzerland. The vaccines are ready to be shipped to countries for emergency response. The stockpile is being created by four leading international health and humanitarian organisations-WHO, UNICEF, Doctors without Borders and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to contain future outbreaks.
3. Bharat Biotech has signed an agreement with Brazil’s Precisa Medicamentos for the supply of COVAXIN. The agreement follows a visit by a team from Precisa Medicamentos to Bharat Biotech’s facility last week to discuss potential export possibilities of the vaccine.
4. The United States on January 11, 2021 re-designated Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism for frequently providing support for the acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to the terrorists.
5. The Union Cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi approved the Memorandum of Understanding on the scientific and technical cooperation between the Ministry of Earth Sciences, India and the National Centre of Meteorology, UAE.
6. A 122 member Bangladesh armed forces contingent will be participating in India’s Republic Day parade on January 26, 2021. This is only the third time in India’s history that any foreign military contingent has been invited to participate in the National Parade at Rajpath. It is significant as 2021 marks 50 years of the Bangladesh Liberation War.
7. Odisha has waived the examination fees for matriculation students of the ongoing academic session. Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik ordered the waiver in the larger interest of the students.
8. Domestic rating agency ICRA Ratings said it expects the country’s real gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 10.1 per cent in FY2022. The agency expects the headline CPI inflation to decline to 4.6 per cent in FY2022 from 6.4 per cent in FY2021, while exceeding the mid-point of the Monetary Policy Committee’s (MPC’s) medium target of 4 per cent, for the third consecutive year.
9. According to an official notification by the Government of India, Ministry of Transport and Highways, the ministry has decided to observe Road Safety Month from 18 January to 17 February 2021 instead of National Road Safety Week.