17/06/2013 World Business Report

BBC World News. Now for the latest financial news in World Business

G8 leaders are expected to call for more transparency and the global

exchange of information in a bid to crack down on tax evasion.

The 50th Paris Air Show is opening today and the dogfight between

Europe's Airbus and America's Hello and welcome to World Business

Report. I'm Sally Bundock. Also, we will also look at Singapore's

latest trade data. First, British Prime Minister David Cameron, who

is hosting the annual G8 Summit in Northern Ireland this week, says he

will put tax evasion and aggressive avoidance at the heart of the

meeting. Britain's offshore jurisdictions, including the Isle

of Man and Jersey, have signed up to an initiative led by the

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. They

have agreed to be more transparent and exchange information and give

details on the true owners of so- called shell companies. Our

business reporter asked Allan Bell, the Chief Minister of the Isle of

Man, whether he thought this move by the G8 was politically motivated.

There is a great deal of political focus on small jurisdictions but

the danger in that is that they are missing the real target, which are

way beyond the shores of places like the Isle of Man. We have a

well regulated jurisdictions, we fully comply with international

standards. There are many other jurisdictions that do not. I think

they need to broaden their range, to identify where the real problem

areas are. For example, the US has estate called Delaware. It's a

brass plate state, full of many companies, many more than there are

inhabitants. There was an interesting article in the

Financial Times that identified a single building housing over 2000

companies. That is ten times the total number of companies

registered in the Isle of Man. Most of those are of unknown ownership.

It shows the scale of the problem. HSBC said in their most recent

report that they were going to use, their words, tax havens an awful

lot less because they had, "and bad name". Is there a danger that some

of these banks may decide to bring bigger investments onshore and that

could affect investments? There are two issues. That debate is going on

around at the moment. Most banks are reconsidering for a number of

reasons. We have to be very conscious of that. Alongside that,

we have the review of the banking system anyway, the review going on

currently, and that will we do find the relationship between onshore

and offshore banking. -- will be defined. That will develop further

over the next 12 months. Is the Isle of Man a tax haven? No. I

would ask for U2 first explain what you understand as a tax haven. --

for U2. But the Isle of Man has a very open and transparent economy.

We are fully co-operative with the international community.

Interesting. That was the chief minister of the

Isle of Man. With me is George Bull, Senior Tax Partner at Baker Tilly.

Clearly the UK's prime minister, who is hosting this meeting, wants

to be seen to be doing his bit but they have done quite a lot? He has

worked hard on this and it has been necessary for the credibility of

the UK to get the Crown dependencies lined up and ready to

sign an agreement on the exchange of information. It's a very

important step. And would you say taking a bit of a risk? It is.

Sometimes we hear of first mover advantage. It is the opposite here.

It gives a great exchange of information between the

dependencies of the UK and the various tax authorities. But if

other nations do not play ball and signed up, companies will still

have plenty of places to go. What you think this G8 summit will

achieve from the point of view of getting other countries to play

ball? I think this will really change the mood music and show that

the G8 is serious about exchanging information, potentially about this

UK driven register of ownership of companies, and that will play very

well not only with the domestic populations but especially the

pressure groups. People are really concerned about tax justice. What

about the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google? The big multinationals have

been on side of the UK government. And the UK government is in a bind.

It said it would give us the lowest tax rates from G20. The UK begins

to look like a tax haven but, at the same time, it wants to get rid

of multinational avoidance. A bit of a problem. We will not hear much

about that at G8 because the next big move is from Paris later this

month by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and

Development. Thank you. We will keep you up-to-date with that story.

We will keep you across any development as they take place.

Moving on. Boeing and Airbus really miss a

chance to try to steal the limelight from each other. And it

all went a bit quiet when first the giant Airbus and then the Boeing

787 Dreamliner hit major delays. Today, they resumed their dogfight

if not in the skies but on the ground at the world's biggest

airshow, which opens north of Paris this morning. Our correspondent is

there. Welcome to the biggest ever Paris

Air Show. Certainly for exhibitors if not orders for the big plane

makers. Airbus said it should be good for around 200 orders. Boeing

says it will not play the numbers game. Everybody is excited about

the second potential public appearance for the Airbus A 350.

Together, with Boeing's delayed Dreamliner, it heralds the start of

a new era of Lena Burnie, light bodied planes, allowing the

industry to deliver the Holy Grail, low cost, long-haul travel.

This Nordic airline hopes to succeed where others have failed,

running budget flights from Europe to Asia. They have a record 273

Boeings and Airbus planes on order. They will really be game changes in

this market. When we do the calculation, we could get the

numbers to add up with the older airplanes. With over 600 Airbus A

350s and 90787 Dreamliners already on order, some carriers are going

to have to wait several years for their orders. -- 900 Dreamliners.

Even though it needs within the next 20 years China could become

the world's third largest plane maker.

We will hear more on that later this week.

The tiny city state of Singapore is often seen as a bellwether for

Asian economies, and if today's trade data is anything to go by it

looks pretty gloomy. Sharanjit Leyl is in our Asia hub in Singapore.

Nice to see you. Tell us more about this news. Just about as gloomy as

the weather today. Exports are falling more than expected.

Domestic exports fell 4.6% from one year earlier. That is after it fell

about 1% in April. Shipments of electronics in particular did quite

badly, falling over 13% from one year ago. That is the 10th month of

decline. All of this due to an uneven global recovery, which is

essentially hurting demand. Analysts have lowered their

estimates for the export growth this year to around 2.5% from 4%

previously. Or not this ties in with a World Bank forecast last

week which cut global growth projections for this year. That is

after emerging markets from China. It has weakened prospects for

Singapore's open trade dependent economy. Singapore may be small in

comparison to others in the region but, because it is open, it usually

acts as a gauge against others in the region. Thank you.

If these are the markets. They started a new trading which in Asia