this is bbc news, the headlines... the us shoots down a suspected chinese spy balloon that had flown into american territory. three airports were closed and airspace was shut down so it could be targeted. the us presidentjoe biden approved the plan. i ordered the pentagon to shoot it down on wednesday as soon as possible. they decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground, they decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water. documents obtained by bbc news show magistrates in england and wales were told to wave through a bulk of applications by energy companies to forcibly install prepayment meteres in homes. pope francis led prayers for peace, unity, and justice at the mausoleum ofjohn garang, the founding father of south sudan. the service was part of a "pilgrimage of peace"

to the country torn by internal conflict. you are watching bbc news. now, it's talking business. hello, everybody. a very warm welcome to talking business weekly with me, aaron heslehurst. let's go and take a look at what's on the show. the great global divide — is the world economy drifting away from us dominance, as some of our biggest emerging economies are showing us what economic growth is all about? india, it's sitting pretty at the top of the pack, growing faster than any other major world economy. it's also one of the major leading players in the group of emerging economies who are talking up the idea of a common trade currency to counter the dollar. so, could they become the trading block of the future? i'm going to be discussing all of that and more with these two. there they are. the man who first coined the phrase the brics, and a former central bank

economist from brazil. also on the show, shining bright like a diamond. yeah, the shiny rocks have been one of the big winners post—pandemic. but can they keep their lustre in a shaky global economy? i'm catching up with the big boss of the world's biggest diamond supplier. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello, and a warm welcome to the show. you know, back in 2001, a directorfrom goldman sachs, jim o'neill, now lord o'neill, coined the phrase the brics, an acronym for what he gauged were the countries with the highest growth potential that would dominate the global economy by the middle of this century. so, brics, we're talking about brazil, russia, india,

china and later south africa. they became an established group within a decade. they have met every year since. they emerged as a group collaborating to challenge the western dominated economic order and to advance their common economic interest. and it's a club with clout, comprising over 40% of the world's population, together making up nearly a quarter of the global economy and approaching a fifth of the total world trade in goods. the growth story has been somewhat mixed across the brics with, of course, the tremendous growth from china vastly leading the pack, becoming the second largest economy on the planet, with brazil, south africa and russia largely failing to reach their potential. but the story for india is different. last year, india's expanding economy overtook the uk's, making it the world's fifth largest. a trend predicted to continue with banking giant morgan stanley forecasting that india will push past germany and japan to become

the third biggest economy by 2027. building on impressive numbers like the just—under 7% growth predicted for the past year, as the economy, of course, bounces back from the pandemic. and india, it's forecast to get well over 6% this year, 2023. maybe a slight slowdown, but let's put this into perspective. the outlook for the entire global economy this year is under 2%. so now some of those brics economies are really steaming and challenging the american global dominance. if trends continue, they could represent the major global economic club for the future. this year, the group is chaired by south africa, and here is our man in the economic hub, johannesburg. with south africa's president, cyril ramaphosa, holding the chairmanship of brics this year, his main agenda is to advance africa's interests within the bloc, and those interests could include unlocking the potential of intra—africa trade. but much more investment is needed within the continent

for that to happen. ramaphosa has also stated that he wants to invite other african countries to the summit. more countries could soon be joining the group as well. there are reports that there are up to 12 nations who would like to be part of the bloc. the likes of turkey, algeria, argentina and even saudi arabia have made overtures to brics. in future, the group could be called brics plus, or another name altogether. the 15th annual brics summit is being held in durban this year, and it comes at a time of rising global uncertainty, the russia—ukraine war, the climate change crisis and the rising geopolitical tensions between major powers. the summit will be an intricate balancing act between these world events alongside the interests of the brics member countries as well. vumani mkhize there, from johannesburg. now, as we've been saying, the outstanding economic performer of the moment, it's india, cited by some as the major source of global growth for the future. so, i went straight to the source and i caught up with the man who,

as we've said, coined the phrase the brics. jim 0'neill, a real pleasure having you on my show. andjim, once upon a time, it seemed that the brics were a group of nations with some commonalities that you identified, and they've since become a much more formalised bloc. what difference has that made to the way that they interact with the rest of the world? i'm not really convinced that, since they formed themselves into a political club, it's been particularly successful. i guess the biggest thing that it achieves is this constant highlighting of perhaps the inefficient, out—of—date structure of global governance, because particularly china and india have become so big that they're still not really properly represented in the imf, the world bank, obviously the un, and so on. and one of the purposes of their meeting is to constantly highlight to the world that a bunch

of big developing countries can get together and talk about things without the rest. when we look at the war in ukraine, i mean, you can see that other members of the brics alliance show more neutrality towards russia than perhaps many in the west. how much of that is down to those brics relationships? i think it's a crucial part of it, although as i'm sure you know, and your viewers will know, there is certainly a lot of nuances and differences between how they do it. you know, for china itself, one of the great appeals of the brics group is this ability to still regard themselves as the father of the emerging world.

and therefore, by definition, china would virtually always stand together with that group in the event of one of them having a big issue with the west. the indians, in many ways, i think, have actually been particularly clever at how they've played this issue, not least because of course they are being courted by the west as the real big democracy amongst the brics. and so they seem to have managed to have not upset particularly any western countries, despite the fact, not only have they stood in neutrality, but actually seemingly benefited from getting more energy exports from russia to them. jim, is india and the other emerging economies doing business with russia, are they in danger of, i don't know, getting burned by the biggest markets here in the west? well, i think below at all, and it's

a very important question to raise, and i think this is where the g7 countries, including the us, don't have as strong a hand as they often try to portray, and it goes back to the economics. collectively, the g7 economies are now less than 50% of global gdp. every g7 member bar the us is essentially struggling with its growth performance. and so, when european countries look for opportunities, for example, the rest of the world, they won't abandon, quite justifiably, their own long term economic interest despite some of these challenges. so i think, and this is why india is, i think, playing a particularly clever role, because they know that many western countries are desperately eager to try and benefit from the indian growth story over the next couple of decades and beyond. jim, perhaps the indian approach prioritises its own economy. i mean, it's booming now despite an underlying

sea of global doom. i'm wondering, what is it that india is just getting so right? the core asset that india has got is a spectacular demographic profile, particularly a significant increase in young people entering the labour force. and on some of the data that we played around with that painted the brics story, between 2020 and 2035, just the increase in india's labour force, and every time i say it, it astonishes me still, that increase would be as big as the combined total workforce of germany, france, italy and spain. so that's what really... they're in a real sweet spot with their demographics. and together with, it's kind of like 20 years behind china in the urbanisation process, they are reaping many of the benefits

of agglomeration and development. jim, we know it's possible that more members willjoin the bloc soon, attracted by the focus on, well, shared economic interests away from geopolitical differences, basically working together for common trade advantages and staying out of internal issues. how important do you see that kind of pragmatic stance being for for new trade alliances? it's very, very interesting. 0n the one hand, as we touched on earlier, the brics political group has not really achieved anything, other than making grand pronouncements every year that doesn't really lead to much. it's worth pointing out in that regard, the two biggest members, china and india, don't exactly have the closest of relationships, and often in significant disputes.

so that makes me think well beyond symbolism of bringing in a saudi arabia or egypt, or a thailand i see even being talked about, you know, what does that really mean? however, if they think through the rationale as to why they're going to bring in new members and what specific goal would it help achieve, and then when you translate that into specific countries, for example, saudi arabia, if we start to see other big, big energy producers like the saudis become part of the brics group, then you begin to see the possibility, if these countries could organise themselves collectively, of the beginnings of a shift away from the domination of the dollar in global trade and finance. andjim, let me end on this. with all of these issues

in the global environment. how do you see the global outlook for the coming year? so, i sort of share what i think is an adapting view as 2023 gets under way that maybe it's not going to be quite as grim as everybody thinks. you know, i can't emphasise again enough just how important the cyclical performance of china is for the world economy and the very fact that china is abandoned, with great speed, its aggressive lockdown policy, that means almost by definition to somebody like me, that's going to be a big benefit for the world economy from china opening up. but i think that issue and some evidence, despite the horrific state, or seeming state of the war in ukraine, the stabilisation and in some cases significant decline of commodity prices almost definitely means the inflation picture is looking better. and so we can also look forward

to the idea that central banks at least stop raising rates in the not too distant future. and so all of that suggests to me the world economy is probably going to do better than i see many othet commentators talking about this year. jim 0'neill, a real pleasure having you on the show. thanks for your time and i'll check in with you soon. well, let's now turn to brazil, the world's fifth biggest country, both by population and size. it's a pretty big economy as well, weighing in at number eight on the world stage, but it's still suffering from the aftereffects of a severe economic crisis which hit the country back in 2014, certainly throwing the public finances into a bit of a wobble. so, i've been catching up with a former economist at brazil's central bank. ana carla abrao costa, a real pleasure having you on the show. and ana carla, how divided is the country right now in terms of the former president and now

lula, in terms of their economic strategies? everybody�*s quite divided. so that's a good word, aaron, because there are people that are very anxious about his first moves in economic terms. and there are others, of course, that look back into the four bolsonaro years and say, we have to redo everything. so it's quite an interesting moment for brazil because we still don't know where we are going to. of course, brazil, it's very stable in terms of the main economic moves. we don't expect anything radical, but of course, we want to grow faster. we want to be more equal in terms of the socio—economic situation. so it's time for us to observe. but it's, there's quite a division in the country. soaring prices are still a huge challenge pretty much everywhere, but brazil, you've managed to more than half inflation

since a peak of over, i think it was around 12%, in april last year, but you've only managed to do it with these crushing interest rates. i mean, at the time of this interview, those rates, as you know, were 13.75%. how much is that hurting the local economy? it hurts a lot, especially if we make the calculation on real terms, we are talking about 8% real interest rate, which is huge. of course, the economy has been impacted and it will still be impacted for the coming months. but we start to see inflation going down. once the government is able to show that they will be responsible, that the fiscal management will be a priority for the new government, we will start to see the economy and the interest rates and all this premium being lowered, and the interest rates can be

lowered in a not a fast pace, but at least we can start to see the rate cuts in the horizon. and ana carla, if we look at the brics grouping, i'm wondering how do you see brazil's continued relations with russia? that's a very important question, aaron, because brazil has been trying to be more neutral than maybe the majority of the population would want to in terms of the russian—ukrainian war, even lula, bolsonaro before, but even lula, he has been very cautious in his positioning about the war, but he's very cautious in terms of being in the middle of the way. doesn't hurt the relationship with the brics and russia as a whole, but also to make sure that our relationship with the west is not harmed by this ambiguous position.

and let me end on this, ana carla, how do you see the year ahead for brazil? very positively, aaron. we have, of course, our challenges, our local reforms that we have to go through, our political stabilisation that is just starting. there's a lot to do. there are challenges that have to be faced by the current government. brazil has never been a very calm place. we are used to it, but definitely we are in a better position than we were last year. ana carla abrao costa, a real pleasure having you on the show. thanks for your time and i'll talk to you soon. thank you. it was a pleasure to be with you. now, diamonds, they're almost as old as the earth itself at more than 3 billion years. and, as the saying goes, a diamond is forever. well, de beers, it's the oldest

and the world's largest producer and distributor of diamonds. and it appears that the shiny rock industry has boomed in this post—pandemic world. but given the global economy teeters on the brink of recession, will consumers still be willing to shell out for these pricey little marvels? well, i've been catching up with the big boss to find out. bruce cleaver, a real pleasure having you on the show. and bruce, let's start back at the beginning of the pandemic. i mean, the hit to global economies as people were locked down, the diamond market plummeted, but the bounce back, it's been really significant. the diamond industry has been seen as one of the big winners of the post—pandemic rebound. was that a surprise to you, bruce? i was not surprised by the fact that there was a strong bounce back in the diamond industry in 2021. i was surprised as to how big the bounce back was. so 2020 was probably the worst year on record in the diamond industry. and not only the diamond industry.

of course, many industries went through this in our world in the second quarter of 2020. most of the retail stores around the world in our big markets were closed, and so it wasn't really possible for us to sell anything. and to put that in perspective, we would normally sell in the second quarter of a year like that, about a billion and a half dollars of rough diamonds. and we sold $57 million, which will keep you awake as a chief executive. but we were very focused on the fact that we thought the industry would recover and there was a really strong bounce back in 2021. and i'm pleased to say it's continued actually into 2022. so we had probably the best year on record in 2021. i do think fundamentally driven by a core belief that consumers have in the diamond. and where are your diamonds going? i mean, who's buying them? who are your biggest customers? about 50% of all diamond jewellery is bought in america, about 1a—16% in china. my guess is that number will come

out a bit lower in �*22. the third biggest market is india, somewhere around 7—9% and the fourth biggest market is japan. so geographically we have quite a nice spread of both east and west of people buying diamonds. in these different markets, there are different buying characteristics of consumers and of customers. in the us in particular we see a very strong trend which is very positive, i think, for the world as well as for the diamond industry or what we call female self purchase. so the biggest growth of diamond consumers in america over the last ten years is female self purchase. and that's i think of course because females are becoming much more and more economically independent, which is fantastic for the world as well as for us. bruce, i'm wondering how concerned are you with the cost of living issues facing many of your potential customers? i mean, with people having to, well, to cut back on spending and let's be frank, diamonds, they're a luxury product. they are a want, not a need. yeah. i mean, people buy diamonds for two principal reasons. and one is they are a financial store of value, but the other one is they fulfil an enormously important emotional need in people's lives.

so they are bought, and gifted and received, as i always say, at life's greatest moments, you know, the birth of a child or the celebration of a partnership or the celebration of some incredible event in your life, or just to say thank you to someone in your lives. i think there's no question that inflation in general is not good for consumers, because obviously their mortgage cost goes up or their credit card debt goes up and they worry about jobs and things. and so, you know, when we talk about �*23 at de beers, we talk about being only cautiously optimistic for the year ahead, i think we will see some headwinds in demand as people tighten their belts a little bit. russia, it was one of the main supplies of small diamonds in the world. sanctions, of course, now bar that trade for some of the largest customers. how has that impacted you? i'm just wondering, have prices gone up due to, well, more scarcity? there's no question that the war in ukraine has made it difficult in the diamond industry. the sanctions on russian goods that you mentioned has led to some dislocation in the world.

and the russian producers produce more very small diamonds than we do. so it has led, in a sense, to a shortage, or certainly a perception of a shortage, of smaller diamonds in the world. and i think that has probably contributed to price rising in the smaller goods. the extraction industry doesn't have, and you know this, bruce, it doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to environmental impact. you know, can mining ever really be green? yeah, it's a great question. i think the extractive industry hasn't done as well as it might have over the years, but i think there's been a tremendous impetus over the last ten years or so to do what we do much, much better. now, i can't pretend that we don't dig a hole in the ground when we mined for diamonds. so what we've got to do is do everything we do as well as we possibly can, work with our communities, be as gentle on the environment as possible. we have a very, very strong ambition in de beers, which is to be carbon neutral completely by 2030. and to give you a small example, it turns out that kelp forests help in the sea catch a carbon 50 or so times more effectively than forests of trees on the land.

and we have invested in a small start up business which is working off the west coast of namibia where we have operations to try and grow kelp forests even faster. so we are very innovative too about the way we try and deal with carbon neutrality. we recognise it's the critical item of our era frankly, and that our children will be looking at us as to what we've done about it. how much do consumers care today, bruce, about where their diamonds come from? because i'm wondering, does it change dependent on where you're selling them, for instance, between, well, between customers in, say, china and the us, your two biggest markets? you know, increasingly we are seeing customers starting to ask questions about where the goods came from that they are buying. i don't think that that's as consistent across the world as you might expect. so i think the trend in america is a stronger trend than the trend in china for now, although i'm sure that will also change in time in china. we also are seeing retailers, and particularly the big global retailers, the big brands asking some very, very serious

questions about provenance, which they should be doing, frankly. for us at de beers, this is a big opportunity, because we built fortunately started four years ago a blockchain which we call tracer to a genuine distributed ledger, blockchain, which will allow all of our goods to be put on the blockchain and all consumers to be able to tell where our goods came from and therefore what they're buying came from. we are seeing consumers starting to ask this question more and more. that is a younger demographic issue, perhaps more than an older one. so we certainly see millennials and generation z asking that question perhaps more than their parents did. as far as i'm concerned, that's a legitimate question to ask. and bruce, let me end on this. diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but bruce, i'm wondering how easy is it for females to find work and rise within the ranks in your industry? so that's a great question. i think the industry hasn't been good enough at diversity, and i think we need all to do more. at de beers, we have a very, very strong programme. i think you've got to be very deliberate about it, and we've changed just

about everything in relation to our recruiting policy. the job adverts have to look like the way the recruiting panels have to look. we've changed our advertising guidelines. i mean, if you looked at some of our adverts from 30 years ago, they're embarrassing in today's terms, but we're very focused in our current marketing about empowering women. so there is more to do. but we have started, and i think we started off on a very good footing. bruce cleaver, the big boss of de beers group. and bruce, we know you're leaving a ceo at the end of this month. so, look, best of luck in your next chapter. and again, thanks forjoining me. thanks. great talking to you. well, that's it for this week, so i hope you enjoyed it. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. of course, you can also follow me on twitter, tweet me, i'll tweet you back. you can get me @bbcaaron. thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye— bye. good evening.

many of us spent saturday with grey skies overhead. i'm hopeful of a bit more in the way of blue sky on sunday, some spells of sunshine — a brighter day if a slightly chillier one. those clearer, chillier conditions are spreading in behind this band of cloud and increasingly patchy rain sinking southwards. you can see the skies clearing out behind, albeit with just the odd shower across the northern isles, and a touch of frost for some as well away from the south of england, where it will stay relatively mild. but for tomorrow, a different looking day, more in the way of sunshine. what you can't really see here on our graphics is some high cloud that may well turn the sunshine hazy across northern ireland, northern england and up into scotland. but certainly, a brighter day, a largely drier day. temperatures of 7—10 degrees — it won't feel too bad if you see sunshine overhead. it looks mainly dry into the start of the new week. more cloud and more of a breeze across the north of the uk, sunshine further south, but with some patchy fog.

this is bbc news. i'm tonya beckett, our top stories... a suspected chinese spy balloon is shot down off the coast of south carolina, on the orders of president biden. three airports were shut and airspace closed, so it could be targeted over the atlantic ocean. they successfully took it down, and i want to complement our aviators who did it. and i want to complement our detectives searching for nicola bulley, who disappeared during a dog walk in lancashire more than a week ago, say they want to speak to a woman who was seen pushing a pram. the forced installation of pre—payment metres in england and wales — the bbc learns that magistrates were given advice suggesting permission could be waved through. a peace mission to south sudan —

the pope makes an unprecedented visit, alongside the leaders of the church of england