Business

Image copyright PA Image caption A tricky situation for Robert Chote, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility You have to feel the Office for Budget Responsibility’s pain. By next Tuesday, the OBR has to come up with forecasts of what will happen to the UK economy and the government …

Image copyright Reuters Philip Hammond has a difficult trick to pull off this week. On the one hand – come clean: the government’s not keeping its promises on the public finances. On the other hand – convince us: the government is serious about the public finances. The government was elected …

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Governments and large corporations may have hammered out agreements to craft a TPP that suits them – but some see no gain for workers US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal as soon as he takes office. …

Image copyright Getty Images You’ve seen all the signs and adverts, had your inbox flooded with emails offering “massive discounts” and “unmissable deals”. There’s no escaping Black Friday. Falling on 25 November this year, Black Friday originated in the United States. The day follows the US Thanksgiving holiday (the fourth …

Image copyright AFP The referendum result makes life even more challenging for Italy’s banks, after the country voted against Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s proposed constitutional reforms. Several banks are trying to raise new money from investors to reinforce their financial foundations. Attention is focused especially on Banca Monte dei Paschi …

BBC Click’s Nick Kwek looks at some of the best of the week’s technology news, including a smart wristband to help people with Parkinson’s disease draw in a straight line by reducing tremors and a hopping mad bot developed at UC Berkeley that can jump a metre off the ground. …

Very few African countries have realised the economic value of geographically protecting their local produce. For example, champagne can only be called champagne if it is made in the Champagne region of France. So far, only three African products have received an internationally protected geographical indications label. The first one …

Tens of thousands of mobile phone customers in Singapore will need to find a new option as the city plans to shutdown its 2G phone network in April 2017. Some users will miss the simplicity of these phones, others the rock-bottom price.

Kenya is eager to make its entry into the oil export business in 2017. It plans to start on a small scale, producing almost a million barrels over a period of two years. There is concern, however, that plans are premature and profits will be hard to come by. The …

South Africa’s Western Cape has more botanic biodiversity than the rainforests of the Amazon. Most of this is composed of “fynbos” – scrubland plants – the majority of which do not grow anywhere else in the world. Fynbos has given one entrepreneur the opportunity to develop her business from a …