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No rift with government over public debt agency: RBI
Mumbai: Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor S.S. Mundra on Monday said there were no differences with the government over setting up an agency for raising public debt.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had on Sunday denied any rift with RBI governor Raghuram Rajan on this issue.
“We have been telling there are no differences. Where is the question of sorting out,” Mundra told reporters here when asked if all the differences between the government and the RBI on setting up of a Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) have been sorted out.
“There is no disconnect,” Jaitley had told reporters in New Delhi after addressing the Reserve Bank’s board of directors on Sunday.
Rajan on Sunday advocated keeping the proposed public debt agency independent of the government as well as the RBI to ensure fiscal discipline.
“Public Debt Management Agency as a professional organisation, independent of the central bank and government, is something that is desirable,” he told reporters.
Rajan said: “Such an independent structure puts some discipline on the government debt process and also frees regulation of the need to create some sort of financial impression”.
The RBI currently oversees public debt management.
Jaitley, in his first full budget last month, proposed setting up of a PDMA with the aim of minimising the cost of raising and servicing public debt over the long term within an acceptable level of risk at all times, under the general superintendence of the central government.
As per the Budget 2015-16 proposal, the new agency will have a CEO and members from the government and the RBI.
As per the Finance Bill 2015-16, the central government will entrust the PDMA with the issue of government securities including short-term papers.
The agency will be responsible for making payments to holders of government securities, in accordance with the terms of such government securities, it said.
Lauding the move, Rajan said: “So I think as a concept and enabling that concept is a very worthwhile move.”
The government’s net borrowings through long-term bonds were pegged at Rs.453,000 crore in the current fiscal.
For 2015-16, the budgeted target for borrowings was Rs.600,000 crore, but the government will raise only Rs.592,000 crore from the markets.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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