its economic growth slowed in twenty eighteen to the weakest rate in five years g.d.p. grew by one point five percent last year dropping from two point two percent in twenty seventeen china is germany's largest trade partner and the source of much of its auto industry's profits china's slowdown is just one of the foreign risks facing germany's export oriented economy that has the potential messy brigs it antigovernment protests in neighboring france and america's protectionist threats still to come on counting the cost venezuela's president raises the minimum wage by three hundred percent we'll tell you why the additional money though won't help people buy any more goods. but first fuel prices in zimbabwe have more than doubled sparking strikes and violent protests the government says it was the only way to make people buy less fuel as it struggles to tackle a currency crisis foreign exchange is now hard to find in a country that scrapped its own currency

a decade ago that's led to long lines for fuel bread and medicine and has pushed up prices fall chatter g.m. reports. frustration over zimbabwe's worst economic crisis in a decade ignited rights and prompted a strike by unions protesters tried to shut down the capital harare and the southern city of bull away oh by erecting barricades and burning tires police responded by shooting live rounds trying to disperse rioters with water cannons and tear gas the uproar began when zimbabwe's president emerson and gaga announced that fuel prices would more than double digits someone just wakes up and decides to increase the fuel price we have demanding that the price be reduced to its proper price the information minister tweeted clever people know what to do avoid fuel guzzlers cancel unnecessary trips and use bicycles do not protest in the streets you can lose a limb in skirmishes that unprecedented increase is seen by qana missed as

a way for the government to control an economy that is once again in danger of freefall not only is there a shortage of cash and fuel but eighty percent of the population is unemployed or not is good you know who has a career as a date anyone above eighteen years of age is standing at home without a job the government should do something because we've farted for them. lack of fuel barricaded roads and burning tires have prevented people from going to work and school protesters are demanding the government meet with opposition leaders to figure out how to end the economy's downward spiral others are resorting to looting for overpriced basic goods and drivers are queuing for hours to try to get fuel at petrol stations that have mostly run dry but i wonder that we can't say we are a country when we are paying five dollars for public transportation and spending more than five days in a fuel queue and when the president appears on t.v. not saying anything useful inflation rose to thirty one percent two months ago

that's the highest it's been since two thousand and eight when the international monetary fund reported. it at more than five hundred billion percent the president at the time robert mugabe abandoned the currency his government adopting the dollar and the crisis wiped out people's savings and pensions ten years on president emerson man on dog was touring russia europe in asia hoping to lure investments into his mineral rich country and divert and a canonic disaster joining us now from london richard siegel richard is seen the emerging markets analyst with many life asset management good to have you with us once again richard why hasn't the government of zimbabwe been able to get a handle on the economy over the past ten years if we analyze conditions it's actually done much better than it had been doing before the currents reform stopped the hyperinflation the economy began to grow although not that much the government

changed a little more than a year ago it had a plan to put into action but it never did this and rather than finance its budget deficit by effectively cutting costs namely salaries it decided to raise taxes and that was the worst combination because it led to poverty and confidence and therefore further economic stagnation so it was the moment when i got was government is is not tackling this in a way that would satisfy economists like you the plant that they have put on paper to some extent well in some respects it is fairly comprehensive and it suggests that the reform elements will turn things around however the good parts it hasn't implemented and the bad parts it has it won't take that much fitter and things around but it needs the political will for that and it doesn't

have that yet why does it not have the political will reach it. it's difficult to say eat and understand that with the change of president towards the end of two thousand and seventeen there was a lot of optimism then some were skeptical they said they only change the person at the top but not the governing out apparatus they then had elections last july they needed some breathing space they needed to put together a plan which they did around october they started having meetings with the i.m.f. and the i.m.f. gave a fairly positive response last month these things take time but the tendency is to delay and delay and procrastinate and just never get around to it but i think that those would be natural lethargy of the old party being in power still where they're a new party and fresh blood i think that would be that incentive to move things forward under robert mugabe the economy was shattered by corruption the botched

land reforms the unemployment rate rose to unsustainable levels i mean isn't the progress being made in the will of that a the other any bright spots here. i think within the gloom we have to recognize that there is a lot of evidence of improvement the economy is after all growing again and before the currency reform it was declining by five to seven percent per year there is a lot of potential in mining and and agriculture in addition the telecoms company liquid telecom which is a home grown company is one of the most impressive t.m.t. companies across africa although there are many may shortages of fuel and especially hard currency we also have to recognize that this is not a necessarily a shortage of hard currency in the economy just hard currency in circulation

there is a lot of dollar hoarding work often is to return then those hard currency stocks would quickly flow back into the economy so i think it really just is a question of confidence and trust in the government to what extent is is foreign investment going to be a lifeline to zimbabwe president when a guy who has been on a charm offensive to a number of european countries trying to drum up foreign investments who who put their money into a country like zimbabwe as with any crisis economies such as symbolically aside from having. economic policies which are stable and coherent and has the support of an independent arbiter such as the i.m.f. the main driver of growth will be generating employment and investment whether it's domestic whether it's money which has left the country which will return or whether it's foreign investors in order to do that you need to have

something to invest in which the country does but you also need to have stable policies and the expectations that they will be stable however the types of foreign trips that the president is making either to russia china or to davos aren't going to track the type of longer term investment that the company needs it needs to focus on the types of investors that were active in the economy and the one nine hundred seventy s. and the nine hundred eighty s. the ones that have been sex excess will in other emerging markets as opposed to the types of investors which will. by into opportunities on a very selective basis and also very opportunistically seeing what they can do and get out of the situation for themselves and maybe the government as opposed to for the broader economy richard always good to talk to your cause of the cost many thanks indeed for being with us. over in latin america venezuela is offering

a grim reminder of what happened to zimbabwe in two thousand the days the international monetary fund estimates that its inflation rate will reach ten million percent in twenty nine team president nicolas maduro has increased the minimum wage by three hundred percent but hyperinflation is expected to swallow up any immediate benefits of a serious stories about reports now from caracas where public health services a crumbling. the hospital of the university of us was once one of the best not just in venezuela but in latin america but matters have to be dramatically in the recent years as institutions and people deal with the impact of the ongoing economic crisis. eighty years old and fell in the subway she says she's barely getting any food. there is nothing here nothing look at what we are being fed it's cold and i don't want to eat it but what am i going to do also in the room there

are patients who have suffered heart attacks and strokes others being treated for gunshot wounds employees from the hospital allowed us to come here to this emergency room to see the situation on the ground they see that they need many scenes food for the patients but you can see here. last weekend electricity in the hospital went out for several hours at least two patients died during that time staff say the toll may be in fact higher so do you think it's on the think is something they said there were five in seven who died there are twelve bodies in the morgue and we're trying to find out when they died we have been telling the government. that the generators were broken for months and nobody heard us. venezuela's president. blamed the blackout on the opposition describing it as a terrorist act with infrastructure feeling empty shelves and shortages of even the most basic drugs president maduro announced his latest economic recovery plan he

told the country's constituent assembly that it was aimed at ending what he's described as an economic war kill sylar you mean the more. the national minimum wage is going to be in half a petrol an eighteen thousand bolivars for the working class a three hundred percent increase he also pledged to distribute food supplies every fifteen days and said the country had now enough money to cultivate at least three million hectares of crops but many believe he's being unrealistic as an important it was no matter what you do two thousand and nineteen is going to be a year with brutal hyperinflation and the government's response is primitive because they are right of the potential costs of reducing public spending in hospitals and on the street it's the people of venezuela who are paying the price of an economic crisis which has left the country virtually bankrupt and unable to help those in desperate need construction will soon begin on china's biggest

investment project in sri lanka after chinese state owned company completed reclaiming two hundred sixty nine hectares of land from the sea the government says the one point four billion dollar port city will be a technological marvel but critics say that it's part of a crippling debt trap when a friend has reports from colombo. this better expensive landry claim from the season around colombo is where she lanka is building a port city that it hopes will become the financial hub of south asia china is helping pay for and build this new project its ambassador was on hand to check on progress. the colombo port city project is an important project of the one belt one road initiative in sri lanka which is one of the key countries along the maritime silk route it is also an important project to implement the consensus of china and sri lanka and is an important project for the benefit of lankan

society and its people for its part china will own a little less than half the land for ninety nine years yet the government is confident that the new development will help sri lanka's economic prospects we are going to be the center of change in the next. and be the catalyst in getting us. china's dominance in sri lanka cannot be ignored this its latest project sri lanka's largest single foreign direct investment a project to build a two hundred sixty nine ahead financial city on land reclaimed from the sea and now china is back again offering sri lanka more million dollar loans the government will likely use that money to pay some of its staggering debt which stands at around thirty billion dollars and chinese loans account for some of that foreign

debt this port in the southern region of humber was built with loans from china but the government couldn't make its payments and had to give up control of the facility to beijing for ninety nine years china has been criticised for pulling sri lanka into what some have called a death trap but others see it differently any investor land china will go where it's needed. opportunities and you know if your long has been not as stellar as we would like you know our whole work and our preparedness we may pay the price so as it builds this new port city of columbus again with chinese money analysts say she lanka's government needs to do better to manage its debts and ensure that it keeps control of make up projects like these and that's our show for this week if you'd like to comment on anything that you've seen you can get in touch with me directly i'm at a finnegan on twitter please use the hashtag a j c t c when you do or you can drop

us a line counting the cost of al-jazeera dot net is our e-mail address as always there's plenty more few online at al-jazeera dot com slash c.t.c. that takes you straight to our page and there you'll find individual reports links even entire episodes for you to catch up but that's it for this edition of counting the cost i'm adrian finnegan from the whole team here in doha thanks for being with us the news on al-jazeera is next. taiwan. a sovereign island state or a renegade province of china that must soon return to mainland control. as the battle for taiwanese hearts and minds intensifies. people in power investigates the tactics of those to whom reunification is only a matter of time. taiwan spies lies and prostrate ties on a. didn't know that corruption has reached

a level like that before john kerry. rank outsider. to president of the united states. the power was in the data we will honor the american people with the truth and nothing else discovered. for winning the white house unfair game on al jazeera. the. top court in democratic republic of congo rules felix k.d. will be the next president but his main rival is refusing to concede defeat.

along hasn't thinking this is as the a live from also coming up u.s. president donald trump offers a concession to get funding for a border war but democrats say it's not enough. if we don't think this through this is going to be a rock on steroids a senior u.s. senator tries to reassure turkey over plans to pull american troops out of syria. tens of thousands turned out to bid farewell to a polish man who was stabbed in front of his supporters. a lot of the constitutional court in the democratic republic of congo has declared felix katie the winner of last month's presidential election. she said she critics. judges have dismissed opposition challenges to his victory one of the candidates martin for unity had rejected the provisional results

and asked for a recount he is accusing the ruling party of a constitutional and has called for nationwide protests. that are you. i consider myself the only legitimate president of the democratic republic of congo i call on the congolese people not to recognize someone who would take on that role illegitimately nor to obey the orders coming from him. for me the miller has more now from kinshasa a few hundred supporters of the great were gathered in the administrative things in kinshasa still a great thing to. be constitutional court ruled that the election result should be upheld recognizing political capital as the new president of the democratic republic of congo people here say this victory is very much about an independent democratic republic of congo and that nobody should interfere in the institutions in this country and the democratic what they consider to be the democratic result

that's come out in the last couple of hours now we do know and we've heard from my mouth and tell you the opposition do not large the claim with the constitutional court challenging the electoral commission the result he has said that he doesn't recognize what the constitutional court has said he considers himself a legitimate we know of that election he should be president it is also called the peaceful pulse was not just how much of an impact those protests would have been kinshasa it is unknown especially given that there is a significant support electricity but most of the you look like have support in the northwestern part of the country as well as the east and there are concerns around these protests and just what might happen in the coming day concerns around potential violence from african union highlights or wanted to send a high level delegation to the the r.c.c. they wanted to help the the r.c. what he considered to be

a political crisis many people have made that no one outside of the capital in terms of intervening will bring in the democratic. of. the african union claim that this is a political price a lot of concerns when we do about it about what might happen well i mean what many would consider the controversial political court ruling. apia angle but is a professor of international relations at pomona college he says many people are likely to answer for you those calls for protests the decision by the court is not that surprising the court is widely understood as being popular with judges loyal to the president a few months ago back in two thousand and eight teenie appointed new judges and people saw that as a strengthening of the court his favor but you know when you think about it the brilliance of the arrangement that they have is that now you have the supporters of the the president of self and the supporters of security being in favor of the

decision and therefore rescript your position and your people and can just celebrating because the laws of you d.p.s. the security supporters there and that that puts for you to a new supporters in the position of being one versus two and that's going to be a big issue going forward to start doing peaceful protest tomorrow what it will be made with significant mobilization by you d.p.s. actors you know today in fact there were new soldiers outside of the court instead there were security supporters so you can see how the regime can even delegate enforcement of the decision to to form a segment of the opposition which now will be part of the coalition the two more a sunday tomorrow morning people will be in church and i don't know what the priest will say and i don't know what's going to come out of this but i would imagine that there could be significant protests and even if they want him to be speech full the regime has a strong repressive capacity and it could easily slip into a violent outcome the u.s.

president has offered a concession to democrats in the latest effort to end the longest government shutdown in american history but democrats have already rejected his offer what reynolds has more from washington. with the government shutdown dragging toward the one month mark president trump offered democrats a deal give him five point seven billion dollars for his border wall and he'll lift the threat of deportation for a million undocumented immigrants number one is three years of legislative relief for seven hundred thousand dokken recipients secondly our proposal provides a three year extension of temporary protected status or t.p.s. . the immigrants tromp referred to our young people brought to the u.s. illegally by their parents as children known collectively as the dreamers and non-citizens from countries hit by natural disasters who had been permitted to live

in the u.s. both groups were stripped of legal protections by trump but court rulings have so far prevented the government from deporting them it was an offer trumps democratic opposition could and swiftly did refuse to hear house speaker nancy pelosi issued a statement saying quote it is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the house and taken together they are a nonstarter she repeated the democrats arguments that the wall would be ineffective agencies and senate democratic leader chuck schumer said trump was treating the dreamers a very like hostages trump described hardships faced by migrants and a flood of drugs coming into the us drugs kill seventy eight thousand americans a year and cost our society in excess of seven hundred billion dollars critics point out that most of those drugs are smuggled through legal points of entry and

that a wall would have little effect on stopping traffickers what happens next the republican controlled senate will take up trumps proposals and almost certainly pass a bill in corp. reading them and restoring funds to end the shutdown that bill will then go to the democratic controlled house where pressure to pass it may become intense just peel away twenty twenty five democrats who want the government open and are not so adamant against the wall to carry the day even if the government even if the democratic leadership remain opposed to the war a possible grounds for compromise palosi said there needs to be a permanent solution for dreamers and t.p.s. recipients not just a three year reprieve if both sides start bargaining again the longest ever government shutdown could be brought to an end rob reynolds al-jazeera washington

a u.s. senator lindsey graham has again warned saudi arabia over the killing of journalist jamal khashoggi on a visit to turkey the republican senator also said he hopes president trump will slow the withdrawal of u.s. troops from syria osama bin jet it has more from gaziantep near the turkey syria border. the killing of saudi journalist jamal khashoggi was very much on lindsey graham's mind he said relations between washington and riyadh couldn't be normalized and the crown prince mohammed bin so man widely believed to have been behind the murder has been dealt with we will. start sanctioning those involved with the killing the mr shogi will make a definitive statement that n.b.s. knew about it and is responsible for it and come up with a series of sanctions. was last seen at the saudi consulate in istanbul on october the second after initial denials the kingdom eventually admitted that saudi agents killed the journalist who criticized the crown prince of saudi leaders say eleven

saudis have been indicted while the us government has imposed sanctions on seventeen saudis for their suspected drawled in the murder lindsey graham is an influential u.s. senator who is a member of the foreign relations defense. and appropriation committees he's been both an ally and a critic of president donald trump although he's not known for mincing his words but his outspoken stance cannot be confused the deficient u.s. policy he said a little more than a month ago that marvin summer was a wrecking ball and that it was very clear that he was responsible for the murder. and now he's talking about handling the situation i think it's a bit of a bit of a walk back and also i think it's worth pointing out that this is actually useful for dog trump because to have someone who is an ally of probably very close ally and a very powerful senator coming out and in effect demanding something be done with. take some of the pressure off donald trump present a united states republican senator has previously visited the area in northern

syria before americans put him in one thousand people killed on wednesday the suicide of isis fighters and members each followed the u.s. president announcing the draw of u.s. troops and declaring the defeat divisive sparking get into the fall out between the americans and the turks it's a delicate balance on the border between syria and turkey the so-called safe zone is in the region sandwiched between syrian government forces backed by iran and russia and turkish troops on the opposite side u.s. forces and kurdish allies are squeezed in the middle turkey's leaders view kurdish by p.g. as terrorists the u.s. is trying to tone down that hostility towards the kurds the roadmap to men beach is the most important thing to be accomplished in the near term. so i would hope that president trump would slow the withdrawal until we truly destroy isis and see if we can implement the roadmap to mend bitch as a cop that's building measure that were removed by b.g.

elements from a bitch working with turkey while the people i'm a bitch to come up with a governing structure acceptable to turkey in the region if we do not do this. our was draw it's going to create holy hill for turkey so is the threat of an isolated serjeant's as well as warming ties between kurdish fighters and iran backed forces all i'm acceptable for both turkey and the united states the summer job with al-jazeera. the saudi m a rotten coalition has lost a series of air strikes in yemen capital the military base and drone facilities were targeted it's the first time the coalition has nor airstrikes in the capital since yemen's warring sides met for un back talks in sweden last month. still ahead on al-jazeera anger and defiance as women rally around the world calling for gender equality.