11/03/2016 World Business Report

Now for the latest financial news with Sally

Five years after the Fukushima disaster, is the world becoming more

And how India is looking to private investment for more innovation

Welcome to World Business Report. I'm Sally Bundock.

Also in the programme: The boss of Samsung is warning this will be

Our team in Asia will have the details.

As you've been hearing, Japan is marking the fifth

anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that left

The enormous quake struck offshore, creating a vast water surge that

It also triggered the world's worst nuclear disaster

since Chernobyl, in 1986, after the tsunami knocked out power to

the Fukushima nuclear plant, taking cooling systems offline, which set

Japan is struggling to restart its nuclear industry

and is continuing to rely on costly fossil fuel imports.

The Fukushima plant was designed to withstand an earthquake and it did.

The reactors shut down safely. But the 14 metre tsunami that followed

wasn't planned for. It knocked out cooling systems, allowing the

reactors to overheat, leading to a series of explosions. Before the

disaster Japan had 54 reactors available, producing one third of

the country's electricity. In the aftermath all of them were shut

down, and only a handful have since been restarted. There are currently

just two in operation. Other countries are facing out nuclear

power, many of them in Europe. Germany had 17 reactors by this

ago, it is now down to eight and they are due to close by 2022. China

is still keen on nuclear power and plans to build at least six reactors

a year until 2020 and wants to become a major exporter of nuclear

technology. Russia, India and South Korea all want to build new plants

as well. So the industry's bruised but for the moment it has a future.

Joining me now is Steve Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy

Thanks for being on the programme. For obvious reasons what happened

five years ago completely put on hold, if not backwards, the nuclear

policy in Japan. But other countries in the world completely changed

their thinking about their nuclear policy. I think you can divide the

country is up into three sets. There were the countries like Switzerland,

Germany and Italy that really turned their back on nuclear power and I

don't think there's any going back for those countries. Other

countries, like perhaps France and China, did take a big pause for

thought, while countries like the United States and the UK didn't have

much -- feel much impact. So there were different reactions. In terms

of Japan, if we could focus on it to start with, it has tried to get more

nuclear reactors back online, it's not been an easy path for obvious

reasons. But actually for the Japanese economy it is so important

that it looks at where its energy is coming from, given the fact that he

doesn't have resources of its own? It seems to be in a bit of a

no-man's-land at the moment. It's not being successful at bringing

back its nuclear power plants, but isn't pursuing alternatives. If we

look at Germany, it has set itself against nuclear and is vigorously

pursuing renewables. Then they are doing much better. I think Japan

needs to make a decision. It either needs to give up on nuclear, or it

needs to really go back and force those plants open. But I'm not sure

that's politically acceptable. In the meantime we've got countries

like China that is ploughing ahead. Also, China is exporting its nuclear

technology, investing in the UK as well. Some countries are really

ploughing ahead. There is a lot of talk about exports and nuclear power

plants around the world. Mostly supplied by Russia, with China

trying to get in on the market. But that's always been the case. There's

always been countries talking about nuclear powered -- power, not for

developing countries nine out of ten of those come to nothing, mainly

because of finance. Nuclear power seems to be getting more expensive

so finance will get more difficult. In terms of China, it's talking

about getting into markets, but it really only has three or four and

all of them look quite distant prospects. The prospect of selling

the Briton is quite some way away. They are something like seven or

eight in mining terms of building in Britain. They are just investors.

Thank you very much for joining us. There's so more on our website about

what's happening in Japan and the indications for the nuclear

industry. Moving on. It's a big day for the Korean

smartphone maker Samsung. It's got its AGM

and the boss is warning this is Leisha Chi is in Singapore

for us. This is an important board meeting

when the company is selling its latest smartphone. What are the

challenges it is facing? It looks like Samsung's CEO is trying to

manage shareholder expectations ahead of that annual meeting today.

It was in a letter to them that he said it was going to be a tough year

and their core product is of smart phones, TVs and memory chips will

face oversupply issues and intensified price competition. We

are already seeing that happen to Samsung and other big smartphone

makers. Earlier this year Samsung's caught early -- quarter profits

fell. They have some new models coming out today and this is their

biggest moneymaker, the Galaxy line of smartphones, but they have been

losing the market to Apple and Huawei. It's not as if people will

go out and spend $1000 on a new phone model each time one comes out.

Aside from that, another big development we can expect from

today's meeting is a change to its corporate governance. Samsung is a

huge company and so they are expected to allow non- CEOs to take

out the chairman role in eight of companies within the conglomerate.

Interesting. Lots of change going on. Thank you.

The amount India spends on health-care compared to

the size of its economy is among the lowest in the world,

and so private firms are stepping in to treat those who can afford it.

This has inspired a host of companies, both big and small,

to work on new, often innovative services.

But how much of a difference can they make?

Shilpa Kannan went to Bangalore to find out.

It may look like a pizza delivery service but what is actually being

brought to people's doorsteps is a sophisticated device for testing

eyesight. Just one idea to tackle a common problem that hospital visits

can be daunting and expensive. Getting ill and pay medical bills

are thought to drive more than 60 million Indians into poverty every

year, is a good private businesses be part of the answer, bringing down

costs and getting more efficient healthcare services to more people?

And businesses are getting the inventions into hospitals as well.

Like this monitor, used during pregnancy. Smaller and less

expensive than the conventional machines. Once the belt is strapped

on, a mobile phone app can monitor the heart rate of the fetus. This is

our first product which we have resigned to be used by health

workers, which will be cost-effective and it works in the

Indian healthcare scenario. Today India imports nearly 75% of the

major medical equipment. And it isn't just start ups. Global giants

like IBM are also ringing the latest technology here. Within India you

really get an amplification of the broader problem within healthcare,

which is clinicians have very little time to meet with patience. Within

the US is the ratio of patients to oncologist is 100: one. In India it

is 1600:1, so the time pressure is even greater. Nearly 1 million

Indians die every year because of inadequate healthcare facilities.

About 700 million people have no access to specialist care. And as

the country grapples with growing health-care costs, and a shortage of

doctors, technology driven innovation change is the only hope

many Indians have for better medical treatment.

many Indians have for better medical treatment.

Let's have a look at the markets. As you can see, slightly higher across

the board, which is a better view. Last time I looked they were all

negative. Concern of course about the global economy. We will talk

about that in a bit more detail in a few minutes and we look at the

papers.