01/09/2017 World Business Report

Now it's time for World Business Report.

Divorce deadlock - the EU's chief Brexit negotiator

says there's been "no decisive progress" in this week's talks

with Britain's exit bill the main sticking point.

Plus, green shoots of recovery - how a bumper harvest is dragging

Brazil out of its worst recession in a century.

We start in Brussels, where the third round of Brexit

negotiations has ended with "no decisive progress

those are the words of the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.

He and his UK counterpart, Brexit Secretary David Davis,

have hinted there's been some progress on the rights

But there's one major sticking point - money.

How much will the UK will have to pay to leave the EU?

Among a huge range of estimates, some suggest Brussels will want

this - $70 billion - although even higher

So where are the numbers coming from?

Well, Britain makes a net contribution to the EU budget of 11

EU officials say it needs to keep paying into the current budget

until 2020, along with other commitments.

But Britain is questioning the legality of having to pay once

But it won't enter into any discussion about future trade

relations without the bill being settled.

Those talks were supposed to start next month.

But Mr Barnier is warning there is now "little

Meanwhile, the UK is hoping to line up new trade deals

Later today, Brexit Secretary David Davis is in Washington DC

where he will address the US Chambers of Commerce.

And Prime Minister Theresa May has just been in Japan to talk trade.

Japanese firms employ close to 160,000 people in the UK.

Japan has, of course, recently agreed a huge trade deal

with the EU, just as Britain heads for the exit.

On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pressed Mrs May

TRANSLATION: The fact that even after the Brexit decision,

that shows the profound trust they have in British economy.

With this in mind, I have asked Prime Minister May

for her continued consideration in ensuring transparency

and predictability to minimise the impact on business

activity involving Japanese companies.

In the last few hours, the BBC has spoken to Britain's

International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, who's also in Japan.

He echoed Prime Minister Abe's concerns about the need for progress

It's very clear that businesses not just in Europe but investors

in places like here in Japan are getting impatient

and want to see that final shape of what that arrangement

They want to know that there will continue to be an open

and liberal trading environment in Europe,

and there's a worry that if there's not the sort of agreement that

Britain wants you could end up with impediments to trade

and investment in Europe that don't exist today.

Peter Bishop is Deputy Chief Executive of the London Chamber

Thank you for joining us. Let's start with those issues of trade

talks. Many had hoped perhaps measly that we could start those trade

talks in October given there has been so little progress on the other

issues that Michel Barnier has said it is unlikely to happen. How will

that be making UK businesses feel? They like certainty, they want

certainty, they want to know what is going to happen and you can delay

decisions about whether you will operate in the future from the

mainland or indeed Europe but you cannot put them off indefinitely

decisions like that. Now, if the arrangement that we do end up having

with the EU is as close to as some of us hope what it is now then

actually it shouldn't take that long to put in place some areas concerned

but in a panic. The issue is one of time, it is of the essence, we keep

hearing about the clock ticking, the hope had been talks would start in

October and we have the deadline of March 2019 and for lots of

businesses they will be looking at the divorce Bill, the exit Bill, and

now figures ranging up to 100 billion have been mooted. If there

were feeling from the business community that if the government

would just get on and settled divorce Bill and get that settles,

otherwise the longer they leave it, they could end up losing out in the

long-term if businesses are moving elsewhere because they haven't got

the clarity they need. Of course they want the government to get on,

they want a divorce Bill to be settled. And yes there is an element

that depending on what Gillbee eventually do with the EU, we may be

eating into the monies that we are saving by negotiating harder, as

perhaps one would expect by further tariff barriers, let's say, in the

future. But there is a big feeling around that there is going to be a

transitional period of some years between March 19 and when the deal

is finally, the deal finally kicks in. So looking after Brexit, what

should the government be considering when it comes to negotiating new

trade deals? What issues and what countries should they be looking at?

Well, there are countries where barriers with trade between the UK

or the UK as part of the EU, are high, and therefore by reducing them

there is a likelihood there will be growth in trade. India is in that

bracket. At the Indians will see a trade deal in the round, they will

see not just tariff barriers, nontariff barrier to us, there was

the cultural and education to, they will want everything to be put into

the basket and then make a win- win. There are other markets face were

actually trade barriers to entry are not particularly high, Britain for

example exports to the states more than any other country in the world.

More than Germany or France or Italy. So to spend a lot of time

working out how we are going to increase trade fair when you could

be putting your resource and resource is finite in this, into

places like India, would be my advice. Peter, thank you very much.

Let's turn to Brazil, which is emerging from the deepest

recession in a century - it saw 10% wiped off its economy

GDP figures out later could show it's on track to return to modest

It's all down to the nation's farmers - thanks to a bumper

they been have propping up the wider economy.

But as Daniel Gallas reports, the country still has serious

Work never stops in these fields in Brazil. Today they are covered in

white as farmers are harvesting cotton. Just a few weeks from now,

the land will be cleared to make way for soya bean plantations. This

farmer knows how important his farm is to Brazil. We saved the country

's economy this year. It is impossible to match operas would

look like without its farmers today. From the small ones to the big

plantations, we are helping the country through the hard times.

Agriculture accounts for more than one fifth of Brazil's economic

output. This is bumper harvest means the sector will grow by more than

10%. If Brazil's agriculture sector was a single country, it would be

growing faster than any other nation on the planet. This man is not only

a farmer, he is the mayor of a city. Revenues from agriculture have

transformed his city. It boasts some of the best state funded schools in

Brazil, even after the town's population tripled in size over the

last decade. But despite positive stories in the town, infrastructure

outside could stall the engine of growth. The long road for Brazilian

exports to markets like China, Europe and the US starts here that

this is one of the worst roads in Brazil. You can see there is no

movement at all. It will take days for these trucks to reach the coast

and that makes Brazilian products about 10% more expensive. Our

transportation matrix is not adequate for the country. We need

more railroads. So if we change our matrix, you would save around 100

billion a year, that means $30 billion. A year. But building better

roads and railways is expensive and Brazil's government is

cash-strapped. Prosperity is still confined to the country's highly

productive fields. The bumper harvest may help end of recession

but it will not fix Brazil's more serious problems.

The markets in Asia are trading. They are on the up following Wall

Street which was up yesterday and concerns over North Korea and storm

Harvey seemed to have eased. Keep an eye on the US jobs figures for

August, the Robran goes to you when we get them. -- we will bring those

to you. Nearly half of young,

low-paid parents are struggling to juggle child care with work,

according to a survey Researchers found that irregular

hours were to blame,