29/10/2015 World Business Report

Now for the latest financial news with Sally

It's a growth versus reform debate for China's new five year plan,

will leaders concluding an economic strategy meeting embrace

And making money from the black stuff is that much

harder, today it's the turn of Shell to reveal

results, big write-downs are expected

as it mothballs drilling operations off Alaska and Canada.

Also in the programme, cash is king in Myanmar but is there space

Karishma Vaswani is there for us as voters prepare

A top-level Communist party meeting in China where the nation's economic

and social policies for the next five years are being hammered out

wraps up today; then the state media is due to start revealing what

elements will be included in the final plan, to be ratified in March.

One of the measures rumoured to be included is the end

Some commentators suggest the government could now formally allow

John Sudworth is in the town of Rudong in Jiangsu province,

once held up as a model of enforcement for the one child

policy, but now weighed down by an ageing population.

John, tell us more about how it has worked out there, this policy? How

might it change if the Chinese Communist Party takes on that idea?

It is extraordinary. There is no area in China that has enforced the

one child policy as much as this county. There are about a million

people, the results are everywhere. Half of all schools have closed over

the last decade, everywhere you look there are old people. We spoke to

one man who said he bitterly regretted the compliance with the

one child policy. His wife had two abortions against her will after

their first son was born. There son lives a long away and the man said

that if they had been allowed to have the two extra children, they

would not now be growing old alone. It gives you a sense of the cost of

the policy, this ticking demographic timebomb which is coming to fruition

here. The huge social cost, the burden, the declining workforce.

Many analysts suggest that faced with this reality, that the

Communist Party will now be forced to act. We may well get the formal

end of the one child policy and have it replaced with a two child policy.

Details will begin to emerge over the next few days. As you said, a

massive social cost. Also an economic cost. The Chinese

leadership cannot afford to carry on with the policy when they are

economy is slowing down? -- there. Yes, the policy is acting as a huge

drag on the economy. Whatever they do will be too little too late, the

demographic effect will be seen for years to come. Even if the birth

rate jumps overnight, it will take decades for the new berths to work

their way through. The big thing to watch will be the growth rate, a lot

of speculation that it will be lowered to 6.5%. Admission, things

are also slowing -- births. That is the absolute limit with the Chinese

economy, their limit they need to reach if they need to fulfil the

promise of doubling Z GDP from 2010 to 2020. It is a huge task -- the

GDP. They give us a very good clues about the future direction of

policy, and how the party leaders are grappling with some of these

huge challenges. It is fascinating to look back on the effects of the

policy, we will update you with changes from the Communist Party as

we receive them. Earlier this year, Shell famously

pulled out of a massive expedition to explore for oil in the Arctic

after drilling only one well. It's likely to include

a big write-down You'd expect investors

to be furious, but Shell is exciting them with

another plan - a buy-out of rival energy company BG

as Jeremy Howell reports. Shell pored over $6 billion into

their expedition to find oil of Alaska, once they were there they

drilled one well which they found dry and abandoned the project. They

know it is money must be written off against profits. Investors are now

interested in another big scheme that Shell has under Wacol in an $85

million bid to buy out rival energy company BG. They have working

oilfields off the coast of Brazil and produce a great amount of

liquefied natural. Shell is good at deep water, which is one of the main

products of BG. Shell could see them grow, it could become the biggest

energy portfolio in the world after the deal closes. Shell has the same

problem as every other oil company. The price of crude has slumped over

the past year, because of the rise of hydraulic fracking in the US

which has pumped millions of extra barrels of oil onto the world

markets. The oil majors are now struggling to make revenues meet

costs. It is relatively easy to cut spending, moving back from the

frontiers. A few years people were talking about the Arctic as an

exciting place to explore, now they are retreating and calling for the

safer options which are less expensive. Oil companies are under

constant pressure to find new fields to replenish their reserves. Rather

than explore for crude in the Arctic or deep underwater, Shell has

decided it is cheaper to purchase a rival which has already found it.

Other majors may follow its lead. The other oil majors will be

reporting tomorrow. In other news: South Korea's Samsung

reported its latest results and It's thanks to

a revamped smartphone lineup. Its performance had lately been

affected by increasing competition with Apple as well

as cheaper Chinese products. In just over a week, Myanmar,

one of the poorest countries in South East Asia, heads to

the polls in an historic election. After 50 years of isolation,

Myanmar's economy is slowly opening But as our

Asia Business Correspondent Karishma Vaswani found out from Yangon, some

things in the largely cash-based Early-morning in the street market

in downtown Myanmar. You can smell the products in the air, people are

haggling over prices. Like in most of Myanmar, all of the transactions

are taking place in cash. In this society, cash is still king. At

banks across the country, money sits piled up on the floor. Debit and

credit cards are quite rare here. Most people pay for even the ticket

items, such as houses and cars, in cash. Myanmar is trying to introduce

more modern forms of banking that most of us in Asia are already used

to, such as ATM cards. As you can see, if a hard sell. Most people

still do not trust those kinds of services. Making a deposit into your

account means simply log the cash into the bank -- lugging. What would

you do if you had to move a million? In Myanmar, it's as easy as throwing

it on the back of a pickup truck - in Sachs, of course. The armed

guards, no fuss, just a lot of cash on the move -- sacks. Let's have a

look at the financial markets in Asia reacting to the news from the

Federal Reserve in the US. It has implied that perhaps in December at

the cost of oil will go up -- that.