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Now on BBC News all the latest business news live from Singapore. | :00:00. | :00:18. | |
Higher sales tax, is Japan's Prime Minister on the right track and how | :00:19. | :00:26. | |
will it impact consumers? We take a look at what impact this will have | :00:27. | :00:27. | |
on businesses and residents? Great to have you with us for this | :00:28. | :00:41. | |
edition of Asia business report. We will get to Japan in just a moment | :00:42. | :00:47. | |
but first a potential reprieve for investors are the latest report from | :00:48. | :00:50. | |
China shows the manufacturing sector is registering a mild expansion in | :00:51. | :00:56. | |
the month of March, with the government's official PM are coming | :00:57. | :01:04. | |
in at 50.3, with a reading above 50 indicating an expansion. Let's look | :01:05. | :01:10. | |
at the reaction right now. So far, so good. | :01:11. | :01:24. | |
This also adds to the positive mood, Federal reserve chair comments | :01:25. | :01:32. | |
easing concerns of an early start to interest rate hikes. We move over to | :01:33. | :01:37. | |
Japan where business confidence improved in the three months to | :01:38. | :01:45. | |
March, marking five quarters or 15 months of positive sentiment among | :01:46. | :01:49. | |
Japanese manufacturers, but according to the latest sentiment it | :01:50. | :01:54. | |
is most likely to weaken over the next three months due to worries | :01:55. | :01:59. | |
that the country's hike in sales tax will be heartening future growth. | :02:00. | :02:04. | |
This was released as the country marks a brand`new financial year and | :02:05. | :02:10. | |
effective today, the sales tax goes up to 8% from 5%. It was a campaign | :02:11. | :02:16. | |
promise by Shinzo Abe when he was seeking the office more than one | :02:17. | :02:21. | |
year ago. Here's hoping revenues from the sales tax will help reduce | :02:22. | :02:26. | |
the debt load, over twice the size of the economy. They also want to | :02:27. | :02:31. | |
use the sales tax as a means to provide for rising welfare costs. | :02:32. | :02:37. | |
The last time the country made an adjustment to the sales tax was | :02:38. | :02:41. | |
almost 20 years ago won a lot of people held back on spending, | :02:42. | :02:45. | |
fostering a prolonged period of falling prices and the relation. I | :02:46. | :02:51. | |
asked earlier whether the latest sales hike could have the same | :02:52. | :02:56. | |
effect. Everybody was extremely worried about the impact in | :02:57. | :02:59. | |
particular because of the bad impact of the last hike, almost 20 years | :03:00. | :03:06. | |
ago, but this time it seems to be widely accepted. People have been | :03:07. | :03:12. | |
picking up big`ticket items before and that is smart but we did not see | :03:13. | :03:19. | |
any panic buying. That means that while demand is strong now it will | :03:20. | :03:25. | |
not drop that much. Does hoarding raise industrial production but | :03:26. | :03:33. | |
industrial production numbers saw a dip at the fastest pace for eight | :03:34. | :03:37. | |
months, showing people are very nervous about the sales tax? It | :03:38. | :03:42. | |
rather shows that companies as much as consumers seem to be quite a bit | :03:43. | :03:46. | |
more relaxed about the impact and the negative impact on them of the | :03:47. | :03:54. | |
sales tax. Countries have been preparing for the big rush but they | :03:55. | :03:58. | |
did not expand production in terms of new investment, so they are just | :03:59. | :04:03. | |
smoothing out the impact and otherwise business as usual. A lot | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
of economists feared after the last hike that Japan lacks an engine of | :04:11. | :04:13. | |
growth so there will be pressure to come up with additional growth | :04:14. | :04:17. | |
policies and basically more reforms? We had a very strong year | :04:18. | :04:28. | |
of Abenomics. The promised growth policies would be in place and they | :04:29. | :04:31. | |
have been spending a lot and balancing. For this year, it becomes | :04:32. | :04:40. | |
much trickier. Structural reforms are still very hard to implement so | :04:41. | :04:44. | |
something has to be done when exports are slow as they already are | :04:45. | :04:50. | |
and that is missing debt will be investments or companies are | :04:51. | :04:53. | |
asking, what is there to invest in? What are the incentives? Thank you. | :04:54. | :05:02. | |
Singapore's second`largest lender has made the formal offer to | :05:03. | :05:11. | |
purchase Hong Kong's bank for $425 million. If they reach a deal with | :05:12. | :05:20. | |
the biggest shareholder, the takeover, widely anticipated, will | :05:21. | :05:25. | |
give OCBC a gateway to doing business in China. | :05:26. | :05:37. | |
Chinese Rongshong heavy industries may be too big to fail. They | :05:38. | :05:44. | |
received financing after reporting a loss for last year. `` Rongsheng. | :05:45. | :05:50. | |
Rongsheng are leveraging loans that have not been paid worse in total 20 | :05:51. | :05:57. | |
million US dollars. Manufacturing activity is slowing in | :05:58. | :06:01. | |
Australia with the latest survey for the private sector revealing the | :06:02. | :06:07. | |
manufacturing index slipped to 47.9, well below the 50 level that marks | :06:08. | :06:11. | |
the distinction between a contraction and an expansion. | :06:12. | :06:16. | |
The survey of around 200 companies should businesses are complaining | :06:17. | :06:20. | |
about the rising currency intensifying competition for | :06:21. | :06:23. | |
exports. The Australian dollar hit a four | :06:24. | :06:27. | |
month high against the US dollar last week. | :06:28. | :06:31. | |
Electricity bills are set to go up for households and businesses in my | :06:32. | :06:35. | |
own mark with the effect set to kick in today. `` Myanmar. Electricity | :06:36. | :06:44. | |
bills could rise by as much as 50% which some feel will raise the price | :06:45. | :06:51. | |
of goods and services. Only a quarter of the population has access | :06:52. | :06:54. | |
to electricity aren't they are frequent power shortages. I asked | :06:55. | :07:01. | |
earlier whether these power price rate hikes are indeed necessary? | :07:02. | :07:08. | |
Deeply unpopular but very necessary and prices will rise 25 to 50%. This | :07:09. | :07:15. | |
will affect heavy residential users on some businesses but the | :07:16. | :07:18. | |
government also claims 55% of all households and businesses will not | :07:19. | :07:23. | |
be affected, so they will continue to pay subsidised rates. Power | :07:24. | :07:29. | |
demand is rising by 15% a year in a Myanmar. This is necessary to bring | :07:30. | :07:36. | |
an adequate investment. In the medium term, could this stifle | :07:37. | :07:41. | |
fledgling growth? It does not look as if it well because as I mentioned | :07:42. | :07:45. | |
55% will not be affected than consumers will not be affected. You | :07:46. | :07:50. | |
mentioned only a quarter of households are connected to the | :07:51. | :07:54. | |
grid. Those households are probably not the lowest income households in | :07:55. | :07:58. | |
the first place, so bringing more people onto the grid is probably | :07:59. | :08:04. | |
more important. On the flip side, attract more foreign direct | :08:05. | :08:06. | |
investments in to the country? Exactly. This sort of raising prices | :08:07. | :08:15. | |
makes financing for an adequate supply possible and keeps the | :08:16. | :08:19. | |
country of the diesel power generation bread, and that is | :08:20. | :08:26. | |
better. Making that more viable means you get more foreign investors | :08:27. | :08:32. | |
coming in and more factories and people connected to the grid. | :08:33. | :08:35. | |
Next time you stream a movie or book a plane ticket you may well have our | :08:36. | :08:42. | |
next guest to thank. He is the co`founder of possibly the biggest | :08:43. | :08:45. | |
Internet company you have never heard of, and they delivered up to | :08:46. | :08:49. | |
30% of global web traffic and keep it secure it. He told us how that | :08:50. | :08:58. | |
works. We place our computer servers in thousands of locations around the | :08:59. | :09:01. | |
world with the goal of being near every consumer. When they go to get | :09:02. | :09:09. | |
the content, the browser is connecting to one of our servers and | :09:10. | :09:14. | |
that makes it happened very fast. Proximity means fast but also means | :09:15. | :09:18. | |
you are spreading content around some 150,000 servers. How do you | :09:19. | :09:26. | |
keep that safe? That is a big challenge today so in addition to | :09:27. | :09:29. | |
distributing it and making it very fast, they arouse all sorts of | :09:30. | :09:35. | |
security layered on top so we want to intercept any bad or malicious | :09:36. | :09:40. | |
traffic right where the bad guy is. How do you do that and stay one step | :09:41. | :09:46. | |
ahead of the attackers, those who are becoming increasingly | :09:47. | :09:52. | |
sophisticated? It involves a lot of research and innovation and security | :09:53. | :09:55. | |
expertise to try to figure out what vulnerabilities might be exploited, | :09:56. | :10:01. | |
and also keeping track of who the bad actors are watching what they | :10:02. | :10:08. | |
are doing. Particularly in this region, legislate away, companies | :10:09. | :10:14. | |
are not required to notify of data breach. The last thing a company | :10:15. | :10:20. | |
wants to do is speak publicly about security effort is particularly if | :10:21. | :10:24. | |
they have been hacked. Some countries require disclosure but | :10:25. | :10:28. | |
generally companies do not want to talk about that sort of thing. | :10:29. | :10:30. | |
Thanks for watching. The main news stories this hour. New | :10:31. | :10:46. | |
details have emerged about the final message sent from the cockpit | :10:47. | :10:47. |