06/11/2015 World Business Report

As more countries cancel flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt,

we look at the devastating effects on the country's already embattled

And it is the first Friday of the month, and guess what,

As always, very important, but today's numbers even more so.

Welcome to World Business Report, I'm Aaron Heslehurst.

But first: More countries have joined the UK

in curbing travel to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The governments of France, Belgium and the Netherlands warned

their nationals not to travel, and German airlines cancelled flights.

This is, of course, devastating news for Egypt's already

In 2014, tourism contributed $36 billion to the country's economy.

That is 12.8% of total economic output.

One in nine depend on it for work, according to the World Travel

Last year a total of 9.9 million people visited Egypt.

Russia is the biggest source, then the UK and Germany.

But revenues from famous Egyptian monuments, such as the pyramids,

have plunged by 95% since Egypt's 2011 revolution.

With me is Farouk Soussa, chief economist for the Middle East

Thank you for coming out this horrible hour. Let's start with

this. I was just reading earlier this morning that the Egyptian

government is planning to open, unveil if you will, three tombs that

have never been seen before by tourists. They want to do this to

attract more people. I'm thinking they're going to need a lot more

than three tombs. It is not that there is not enough to see in Egypt,

the issue is security. To be honest, more needs to be done. I think more

needs to be done on the security front in order to attract tourism.

Any country with tourism is vulnerable to these attacks. It is

an under it exploited industry. There is plenty in Egypt and plenty

of infrastructure and improvements that can be improved in order to

grow the tourism sector so I think more can be done by the Egyptian

authorities. The tragedy of what has been done now, apart from the loss

of life, from the Egyptian government's respect it is that they

were trying to grow the tourism industry, and now I think that is at

peril. Some of those numbers I was reading out were already down

anyway. They sound like a lot, 36 billion, and 3 million people get

jobs through tourism but they are already down because 2011 basically

wiped tourism. So is this the nail on the cough and for that so? Well,

Egypt is always going to attract a certain base level of tourism --

nail in the coffin. It is today 13% of the economy. Before 2011 it was

closer to 21 or 22% of the economy. It brought in $10 billion in 2010,

last year it brought in $8 billion. So the tourism industry is already

pretty much on its knees. Now, is this going to be the final nail in

the cough and? I would argue it has already been battered and beaten --

nail in the coffin. What we are seeing is the difficulty maintaining

momentum in tourism going forward rather than a massive blow to the

Egyptian economy which has already happened. And you mentioned the

government were working on revitalising, I guess, that sect.

The challenge, though, off the back of what we have seen for the

Egyptian government is rebuilding the trust to the people -- that

sector. You would think if you depend on tourism so much you would

think you would pretty much throw the kitchen sink at the problem to

show they are doing everything about security possible. Yes, I am no

security expert or anything like that but I would say that it is very

difficult to be 100% effective and it just takes one attack in order to

undermine confidence in the security arrangements, and people who think

there is a one in 1000 chance this might happen to me, they will go

somewhere else. We will speak to you again. Thank you very much for

coming in. US President Barack Obama has

formally notified Congress of his intent to sign

the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is one

of the world's most extensive trade agreements, accounting for about 40%

of the global economy, and the text Mariko Oi is in our

Asia Business Hub in Singapore. Great to see you. I believe that

text is 6000 pages, and I assume you read every one of them. All of

them... Not. But transparency or the -- rather the lack of it has been

one of the issues with this trade deal. And what is interesting is

that currency manipulation got quite a lot of mentions so now member

countries have to commit by the IMF, the International monetary fund,

that they would not cheapen their own currencies for competitive

advantages. But it didn't go as far as to say what kind of punishment or

sanction can be applied, which is what some of the American

manufacturers like Ford were demanding. And of course, China

isn't part of it and China has been criticised by the US for its

currency policies. So there's a lot of question about that. And also

some uncertainty about how Labour laws would work, for example if

America's minimum wage has to apply to other member states like

Vietnam, highly unlikely, and other main sticking points like

intellectual property. There are still some uncertainties about it.

But having said all that, it is not a done deal at all. Even though

President Obama has now notified Congress, for example, presidential

candidate Hillary Clinton is actually against the deal. So

whether President Obama can get it ratified in the US and whether other

countries can do so as well remains to be seen. It is getting closer but

still some work to be done. I am taking my 6000 pages home. A little

bedside reading. Riveting, riveting stuff.

Later today, we will hear how the US jobs market is faring,

and it is being billed as the key indicator as to whether the Fed is

The crystal ball-gazers are forecasting 184,000 new jobs

So will it be enough for the boss of America's central bank,

Janet Yellen, or the markets, to think the economy is healthy

Remember, Ms Yellen told a congressional

hearing on Wednesday that a December rate rise is alive and well.

Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First, joins me now

You know, as I do. We have been talking about this until we were

blue in the face about this rate rise. We say they are very

important, but this has to be the most important, surely? It has to be

the most important meeting we have ever had. If you look at how long it

has been since the Federal reserve has actually hiked rates, back to

2006, it is obvious the very big seachange away from the ultra-

accommodative policy that we have had in most central banks since the

financial crisis. If the Federal reserve believes that the US economy

and the world economy is stable enough to start hiking rates than

that means that we have finally exited the global financial crisis.

And just briefly, we look at a rate rise and we think that thing, it is

a sign of a healthy economy. But certainly if they do trigger that

rate up, we look at some of the Asian economies or emerging

economies, especially some who are holding dollar debt, and that could

be some pain for them. That's right, what is good for the US goose may

not be good for the emerging market gander. We know that when US rates

were very low, leveraged up on US dollar debt, and obviously given the

falls we have seen in emerging market currencies in the last 15 or

16 or 17 months, those repayments have become a lot more. You have to

think that a stronger US dollar will as a result of rate increases

increase that owner as burden on those emerging market corporate. It

is something to definitely watch out for in 2016. Short and sweet, but we

always appreciated. I to get this in. The Germans are at it again!

They are almost like the French. In other news: Lufthansa's main

cabin crew union has called a weeklong strike,

starting today at 11:00am GMT, after last-minute talks between staff and

management over early retirement Lufthansa,

which has taken a $141 million hit to profits from strikes so far this

year, said because the union was not providing any details of the strike

until Friday, it could not yet work Don't forget you can get

in touch with me and some I will be back taking a look at the

papers with Ben. Universities will be able to

increase fees above the current maximum of ?9,000 a year, if they

can demonstrate high-quality Government proposals for the future

of higher education in England would