1000000 people without electricity, we ask what's going on? the same problem at different places in south africa. blackheads are now part of daily life. this is the w business. i'm kate ferguson. thanks for joining me. german business leader is our beginning of the year on an optimistic nose, according to the lation survey from the eco research institute. ceos in the manufacturing sector are expecting to see an increase in i've put in the months to come. this to fight continued concerns over the war and ukraine on further interest rate hikes. figures follow other indicators of a more upbeat mood among german businesses. come a week after german chancellor. all i felt he was cold. absolutely convinced that germany would not fall into a recession this year. and for more than this we can talk to clement served. he's the president of the eco institute. clemens lovely to have you. that can you tell

me how do you interpret these latest figures? why is your business was feeling better? the main reason is clearly that the likelihood of a gas rationing scenario is very low. now, because we've had a very mild winter flow gas storage. so there are plenty tunnels coming on. so that was the one very important risk for the economy and this is off the table now, at least for this went on next. when that comes to be critical. but for this, when we are out of the woods in that regard, what we also see is a slightly easing inflation pressure even beyond the improvements with supply bottlenecks. so a number of positive factors also, the government gas price break takes away some uncertainty for consumers and firms like both of regarding energy costs. so this also

contributes to a reduction in uncertainty. we see these factors contributes to these positive numbers. ok, so some reason for optimism, but it really wasn't long ago that the i m f with predicting that half of the e u was going to fall into a recession this year. and german chancellor shaw says he's absolutely sure that germany isn't going to enter recession. why the mixed messages? well, we have been seeing better days coming in approximately since october. so the for index, for instance, has been increasing since october. and we have been saying for some time that the risk of recession is declining. politicians tend to be optimistic about this statement by thompson. charles just reflects the improved data also the business like climate next data for me for that has been coming in for some time, suggesting that the situation may be better now what we will see next year is

roughly the nation in germany, so it's no positive growth so no reason for excessive optimism, but the very negative scenarios we were discussing in the autumn these scenarios are now off the table and it's not a good news necessarily across all sectors either. is it what about construction? what's the look there? yes, construction is the one sec there where we don't see significant improvements. and that's because we have rising costs of construction. we have seen that for some time materials like getting more expensive wages arising. so we have growing costs in this area and at the same time we have rising interest rates and a lot of construction is finance with depth. and the impact of these rising interest rates is very strong. a lot of people are stopping construction projects because they're saying that the costs are too high at the same time we have

increasing tendencies to regulate rems, and we have increasing discussions about rent caps, and that also makes investment less interesting. all right, time and thank you so much. thank you. now to some of the other tele business stories making news. all passenger flights in and out of berlin's international airport have been canceled. our staff said a one day strike for higher pay. airport authorities are advising the 35000 effected travelers to contact their airlines to re book their flight. unions are calling for a $500.00 euro a month, pay increase. the u. s. justice department is suing google for its dominant of the online advertising. marcus, accusing the attack, i'm tired of using on lawful mean to eliminate competition. the move is part of the government push to rein in the power of big tech, which has enjoyed rapid growth over the past decade. now power has

returned to most cities across pakistan after a nationwide breakdown left the country of 220000000 people without alec twisty at the beginning of this week, train for my care law war had come to a dance cell with internet mobile phone services and 80 and oxen power costs are becoming increasingly common in pakistan where small failures can lead to cascading effect through the nation to terrorism power grid. the lease is out, it comes out a difficult time with the economy already facing pressure from inflation and dwindling foreign exchange reserves. here's what the pakistani energy minister had to say about the situation. good. the see gun is armor. we've learned our lessons that we need to invest in the distribution system, which i will report to the prime minister after some time you bob mcgowan gall

bladder that the power is fully restored. i like that. we are vigilant and making sure that such incidents do not occur again. and we have to make investments in laying the lions as well as their safety. as i walked into our loved about, i know and to talk more about this, i'm going by. i report at ward a in redwood, i thank you so much for coming on. you've been to pakistan recently where parishes really half and quite often how did people deal with them? well, i was actually in pakistan in november that was quite recent. and we have what we call load shutting, which is basically scheduled power card. so you're kind of halfway prepared for them. so i'd face a lot of them when i was back home. but rare are these kind of like nationwide or what 24 hour outages my family was actually struggling quite a lot. i couldn't get in touch with them for so long. so many of my friends who work, remote, or from phone, from home, had to struggle to go from house to house, looking for a back up our generators. we all have some of them,

some of energy like electricity stored for times like this. but actually this kind of 24 hours when really throw you off, especially the starter for work week on monday and in the january of new year that says it was quite difficult for everyone back home. absolutely, the scale was just breathtaking, wasn't it? now, at the infrastructure in pakistan, and when it comes to power is really crumbling. why is it in such bad shape? the system embarks on the electricity grid is actually quite ancient. it's very old . there's a running joke that we have that if you look at the skyline of karachi, you're bound to see these electricity wires hanging everywhere. it seems that there's like a lack of investment in this industry. there's so much political and economic upheaval. there's always this kind of where should we invest? who should we invest in? but this kind of outage, i hope that it has shown to the government that investment needs to be made in the transmission of energy as we've seen or the energy crisis, things can go up and down so fast and having your economy in your people be without

electricity for 24 hours. that's so damaging for, for example, in industry, the textile mills industry, the reported that they may have estimated losses of over 70 bill, me $70000000.00. and that's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of money. it is such a huge impact and we did just hear the energy minister there are thing that he be investing more, but the government in pakistan has a lot of other economic issues on his plate right now. doesn't tell me a little bit about them. i mean, so after the floods of summer 2022 things have just been going downhill. the i m f . review is also pending. that's something that's really high on the government's agenda as to achieve this because a lot of analysts say that might solve a lot of the problems that we have right now. now some of the requirements of the i m f is put through is to remove as to impose more taxes and remove some of the subsidies. that means things will become more and more expensive for the people of box and including electricity and energy prices. and if you like this kind of economic, this is such an economically difficult time for the country. priority need priorities need to be said street. so if this at this outer to start us anything,

it's that it's important to look at different industries and it's important to look at how the economy of the whole country is functioning. and it's also very important to look at energy transmission and see where we go from there. absolutely . when it run, thank you so much for coming up. thank you. and pakistan isn't the only country suffering from power problems? south africa has been grappling with an energy crisis for years now. aging coal fired plants are a major problem with state owned energy from asked common, barely able to afford to buy diesel for emergency generators. for an ordinary people, blackouts are now just part of daily life. the machines are still running at typical kudos. furniture workshop in johannesburg, but soon the electricity will be turned off. it's called lord shedding a form of energy rationing because the country can't make enough. it's lead to frustration everywhere that has dorothy, i put in business terms, admins,

loss of income. i was loss of revenue and it affects my profitability in a huge to day, the power has gone out 3 times. each time for 2 and a half hours, hulu can still run his smaller appliances of a generator, but the larger machines are down. now he and his team after work at night, and on the weekend whenever there's enough juice. but that makes production more expensive and his customers aren't happy. but if that has been to them to okay, fine the cost of and are becoming immaculate and it's beyond what me and you had actually just to make your product alone. i'm suffering a 30 percent loss. it's not their baby. we had an agreement. it's hard for cooler to deliver his products on time and even to pay his employees. lot shedding has become a massive problem for the south african economy at home. however, many have gotten used to it and learned to manage the daily blackouts. like the

could go more family. they know what to do, keep the most important devices charged at all times. an app keeps them informed about when the grids turned off. today. no children 3 times, one at 2 in the morning been 10 and again now it's 6 o'clock until office 8th. and that's what we rely on. tracy, this is the stage. these are the outages and are pretty accurate for cooking. they've switch to gas. sometimes they even had to rely on a little camping stove. the fridge and freezer can handle 2 or 3 hours of being turned off. extremely important though, is enough light, no matter how demit is, make sure that you have your illuminate illumination sorted out 1st because it does affect the spirit. so everything goes dark for a moment when the lord shedding begins. but soon after solar charged lights go on,

you and the family carries on. oh, do you like the good side is that i could spend significant time with the kids. we bond, i get to see them live in, we're more present now that there's no screen. there playing board games instead of watching tv. at least that's a good way to handle what is otherwise a serious crisis for the country. and that's what i show from where you can always check it out. the dot com slash is that on the new youtube channel as well. i mean the team, it's a by and pick up with

the green energy foot gemini, made in maybe some of the world's best on for wind with radio. well call 3. so this is where a german company wants to watch a massive energy project that uses wind power to generate hydrogen. but does everyone profit from clean energy made in germany? in 30 minutes on d w. oh, i just got a thought say what crazy people in

the on the lead of contrasts of ambition be the quality 075 years ago. mahatma gandhi peacefully led the country to independence, full of ideals with what is the remainder of his vision with what's the status of human rights and social justice in what's called the world, merge of democracy. where is india headed? this is the moment to unleash on violet to pass and re

imagine these teachings for relevance to us. gandhi's legacy starts january 20th on d, w. ah ah. this is dw news live from berlin, germany approves the deployment of its battle tanks to ukraine's chancellor sholtes tells parliament his decision to send the leopard to your tanks, follows intense consultation with allies. it comes with the u. s. appears ready to also send tanks to keith also coming off on the show.