21/03/2018 Asia Business Report

And the top story here in the UK.

BBC News understands

that the government is poised

to announce a significant pay rise

for almost all NHS staff

apart from doctors.

It's thought around a million

people will benefit.

Now on BBC News, all the latest

business news live from Singapore.

Because of ongoing concerns about

the use of data by the social

networking giant. And please

reconsider tariffs against China.

That is the message from America's

retail giants to President Trump.

Good morning, welcomed Asia Business

Report live from Singapore with me,

Marika Oi. Social media companies

are in the spotlight once again with

Facebook shares falling for a second

day following reports US authorities

are looking into Facebook's handling

of personal data and the scandal

involving the consultancy, Cambridge

Analytica, is affecting and other

social media firm, Twitter, whose

shares closed down 10% in US trade.

Let's bring in our business

reporter.

Cambridge Analytica has

suspended its boss, Alexander Nix,

over these allegations of data

harvesting and meddling in

elections. Cambridge Analytica has

denied all wrongdoing, as has

Facebook. We saw it to the share

price though. $60 billion wiped out

over two days, the size of a small

economy. Investors are worried about

the implications of the scandal.

Will this deter investors and

advertisers? Will they face more

regulatory restrictions? On Tuesday,

we saw shareholders sue Facebook in

a class-action lawsuit saying that

they have suffered losses because of

this and this could be the first of

several lawsuits. Again, we are at

the tip of the iceberg when it comes

to the scandal and we don't know how

deep this rabbit hole goes.

We also

heard from Facebook, but not the

CEO.

Investors are wondering why

Mark Zuckerberg or Cheryl Sandberg

have not said anything. The teams

are working around the clock to get

all the facts and take the

appropriate action moving forward.

The entire company is outraged that

we were deceived. Again, people are

very worried. Whether Facebook is

going to do something about that.

And Cambridge Analytica has worked

in Asia as well.

Cambridge

Analytica, in that secret video

recording, we saw some of the bosses

talking about Shell companies to

disguise some of that activity. They

have been involved allegedly in

Mexico, Brazil and other countries

and in Asia, Malaysia and India but

I want to talk about Malaysia

because it's a very sensitive time

politically for the country. They

are set to hold another of elections

this year and so the Malaysians

government came out with a statement

saying they had never hired

Cambridge Analytica to help them in

the last round of elections in 2013.

The fallout continues. In other

business news, at Japanese carmaker

Toyota is hitting the brakes on

tests of self driving cars on

American roads after a woman in

Arizona was killed at the weekend

after being hit by an Uber vehicle

in autonomous mode. That accident is

under investigation. American retail

giants are asking President Trump to

reconsider in posing trade tariffs

on China. The likes of Walmart and

target say any tariffs will increase

the price of everyday goods for

consumers at President Trump is

reportedly announcing further

tariffs against China worth $60

billion this week. Debra elms is the

Executive Director of the Asian

Trade Centre and as tensions rise

between the world's two biggest

economies, she explained why even

more tariffs against China could be

announced.

The original number was

around $30 billion. As designed by

his trade team. It was not seen as

big enough by Donald Trump himself.

In the last few days, there have

been scrambling to double that

number and we expect those to be

announced potentially this Friday,

possibly slipping into early next

week but in the coming days.

Do you

think this warning from the likes of

Walmart and target have any impact?

Probably not because this is a

long-held desire of Donald Trump to

raise tariffs on China and do it now

so I don't think he cares one way or

the other what these retailers say.

His desire is to have higher tariffs

and he's saying he will do so.

Does

he have a point? Does he have a

point about intellectual property

and so on?

There are two issues. The

US has a trade deficit. Is that

damaging? No. Does the United States

have a long-standing issue? Yes. Is

it is significant as it used to be?

No. Our tariffs, the way to address

that, is unilateral action the way

to address that? No. What those are,

that is the tricky part.

I's growth

forecast has been downgraded by

Goldman sacks. From 8% down to 7.6%

for the year to March 20 19. What

happened? The world's fastest

growing economy hit by this but not

good news.

It's all to do with the

recent banking scandal that has

happened in India. One of I's

largest national banks, it was

discovered that $2 billion worth of

credit was swindled. This is when

you open Pandora 's box. Following

this news, other smaller public

sector banks which have come forward

and registered complaints alleging

that they have also been defrauded.

It's led to this sort of crisis

within India, in a public sector

bank, the lot of rich companies and

billionaires have been able to

swindled money at different periods

of time is over the last 7-8 years

at a time and I's banking sector is

struggling because of high amounts

of bad debt which has led to lower

credit growth and banks are not in a

position to lend too much money

which Goldman sacks says will affect

growth because if companies can't

borrow, how will they expand?

You

talked about this crisis. How is it

going to change because of the

scandal?

It's quite significant. I's

Central Bank's head said the Indian

Central Bank needs more power. Not

able to regulate I's public sector

banks. Public sector banks dominate

the space here and if they start to

crack up, it affects the economy.

Thank you for the update. Were the

work, the public sector,

manufacturing or services, the big

focus is usually on boosting

productivity. In a factory, as

simple as buying more machines. Can

you technology help us work more

effectively. We try out some of

them.

Could a study of my brainwaves make

the more productive? This company,

MindPlay, certainly thinks so. Even

when I go to get my lunch. We will

find out later what the results are.

Here is another trend. We are

producing vast amounts of

communications data. Telephone

calls, emails, chat of all kinds

what if we could analyse that they

learn lessons about productivity?

That is email dater. Behavox

monitors communications by bank

workers mainly to spot any unlawful

or unethical activity. But now is

using artificial intelligence to

assess whether your communications

are productive. It all sounds a bit

Big Brother.

In our personal lives,

we are giving away this part of a

freezer when it comes to the

workplace, all of a sudden everybody

is upset about the fact that

companies are going to use that dart

to make more money.

Let's find out

what the brain monitor says about

me.

For the first 7- ten minutes of

the meetings, you are very highly

engaged. There was a slow tapering

off. That's because you become less

involved in the meeting. What were

you saying? Exactly.

We can all

train ourselves to be more

productive in the office. Perhaps

fewer, better meetings could be one

answer.

That's it for this