Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm David Harper and coming up on this edition we're hearing from those protests in Indonesia in just a moment.
We're also learning more about Apple's latest iPhone aimed at the budget market and why do some people shun the beach holiday in favour of more adventurous destinations.
But it's to Indonesia first where hundreds of students have taken to the streets as part of the dark Indonesia movement to protest about sweeping and hard -hitting government budget cuts.
They say that money is being taken away from areas like health and education to fund President Prabowo Subianto's multi -billion dollar free school meal program well earlier I spoke to one of the student protesters Jack he explained his concerns including the budget cuts to education and teachers poor pay.
Even government cancel the budget cap because not only education but the healthy and then so many sectors they are not pay the teacher.
Teachers have the reward, but they're not paid.
We demand the performance allowance for the lecture and education such as prepaid in full.
So how has this whole situation come about?
Astridestra Jengrastri is a BBC Indonesia journalist and spoke to us from Jakarta.
Thousands of students, not only in Jakarta, but also in other big cities in Indonesia, they went to the street and demanding changes in a protest that they called Indonesia Gelap or Dark Indonesia.
This is the first major protest under the new rule of President Prabowo Subianto.
He was just elected last year and only inaugurated less than four months ago.
And that name, Dark Indonesia, is a reference to, well, literally turning out the lights to save money.
So what happened is President Prabowo Supianto, because he has this very expensive free lunch program for students all across Indonesia, and it was his campaign promises back last year.
This program needs lots of money, and that's why he, in the beginning of this year, saying that the government needs to cut budget massively in all of the ministries.
And one of the effects of that is some of the workers say their office have to turn off their light before 5 p .m., but that's only just a small part of it.
So they are calling this protest Dark Indonesia because they feel like the future ahead is very dark because the budget cut affects on other sectors like educations and also health care.
And so these students, as young people living in Indonesia, they feel that their future ahead is very dark.
And as you said, these budget cuts are going to incredible levels.
I'm reading accounts of stationery being cut back, of Zoom subscriptions being cut, so people don't have access to kind of unlimited video calls anymore.
They really are cutting everything.
Yes, so what happened was President Prabowo Subianta only say that every ministry have to cut budget this much, right?
And then the ministries, they then have to, by themselves, decide what they can cut off.
And the first thing, of course, the easiest thing is you let go the people who's working outsourced and then they started to save spending on the daily things like electricities or travels.
So the protests, one of the demand of this protest right now is to urge the government to reevaluate on how they want to cut budget.
Indonesian budget is huge and people generally agree that we need to cut budget on some way, but this way of cutting the budget, they say, is not the correct way because it impacts directly on people and that it's not effective.
Astudesta Dengarastri speaking to us from Jakarta.
Well, given that the Indonesian administration has committed to these big spending and infrastructure projects, how can they balance the budget?
Bhima Yudhis Tira is the executive director of CELIOS, the Centre of Economic and Law Studies based in Jakarta.
It's very, very new, very unusual for Indonesia to have very, very tight budget efficiency because Mr Prabowo, the current president of Indonesia, thinks that he needs to save the fiscal space because so much popular programme needs to be spent, for instance, the free meals for the school students.
That free meals project is being looked at extensively.
This is obviously a very expensive thing to bring in.
Is it affordable? Well, we think that the government pushed for 80 million more students to be covered with the free school meal programs.
But the budget currently right now only runs through June this year.
So you need to add more money.
But the fiscal space is so tight.
The debt is soaring.
And I think what missed from the beginning of the presidency is how to target the poor kids in the school rather than general students, that some of them may be coming from the rich family also getting a free meal programs.
So with the budget so tight, I think there'll be like huge problems.
This does come at a time, of course, when a huge amount of money, hundreds of millions, is being spent on the construction of a new capital for Indonesia.
Yeah, the government need to choose this is a dilemma because as we're concerned right now the Nusantara new capitals that being constructed is also affected by the government efficiency it means that Mr Prabowo the president choose free meal programs for the school student rather than continues to
building the Nusantara capital a lot of the argument is that a lot of the funding for for the new capital is coming from private finance though how much of a strain is it on on government spending I think it's very, very huge because we need more than 500 trillion rupiah.
I think it's a huge amount of money, more than 30 billion US dollars to build the new capital.
So I think with the government's budget currently, it's equal to the amount of the debt interest payment that Indonesian government need to pay annually.
So it's very, very, very huge amount of money.
That begs the question, though, is this just the beginning of this?
I mean, could we see tax increases?
We think that Mr. Prabowo promised to not hurt the middle class with the tax increases because previously he just cancelled the VAT 12%.
So he thinks that the tax will not come from increasing tariff, increasing tax rate, but it's coming from the core tax.
So we have a new administration of the tax reform, the digital tax reform, but it seems not working that way.
So tax is not the answer.
So the government's budget cuts or the austerity measures, I think that Mr Prabhu will choose.
We're obviously seeing a lot of pushback, as we say, in terms of some of the protests that we're seeing from students in the country.
Is there any prospect of any sort of pullback on this to give in to any of the demands?
Yep. I think just today the Ministry of Education has resigned from his cabinet.
It means that the pressure to cut more education budget is not going to be supported by the public, by the students in the university.
Because they think that if Prabowo want to grab some money from the educational fund, I think it will be bad for the middle class students.
And I think the pressure is answered by Mr.
Prabowo that he resuffles the Ministry of Education very, very soon after the protest.
Imi Yudhis Taraz speaking to us from Indonesia a short while ago.
Now, yesterday, we saw something we haven't seen so much recently, a much -talked -about launch of a new Apple iPhone.
Time was, of course, that everyone would be sitting with bated breath to see what the new smartphone offering would be.
But as the technological advances have become less earth -shattering, it's become less of a must -see event.
Apple have now announced a new attempt to enter the more cost -effective market with the iPhone 16e, but will a phone that still costs nearly $600 make a dent with cash -conscious markets?
Takara Small is a technology reporter with CBC News in Toronto, Canada, and she's been following the launch very closely.
Takara, tell me first of all, how much of a budget phone is this budget phone?
What do you get that you don't get with the full wag?
I mean, it's a lot cheaper, it's a lot more affordable, but I must say when it's compared to some of their competitors, I'm thinking Android phones, it's still a steep increase.
But if you're locked into the Apple ecosystem, you do get a much faster, more efficient phone, there's slightly bigger screen at a lower price point.
And then of course, we have to talk about the fact that it has a USB -C port.
For many people who have had iPhones in the past, having to use the proprietary lightning port, then you had to juggle so many different types of cords.
This is one of the devices that you can have one USB port that can be used across many devices from many companies.
They're finally moving towards the rest of the pack.
This isn't the first time we've seen a slightly more cost reduced iPhone.
They have made an attempt a few years ago to do the same thing, but it didn't really make an impact.
This is, no, they did try and they have implemented much cheaper phones, but I think we're in somewhat of a new era.
As you mentioned, there are many consumers who are a little maybe cash crunched.
We're seeing that the cost of living, housing, all these things are increases.
And also last year, Apple saw a slight dip in the amount of devices it sold.
So I think all of that together really pushed the company to provide something that, while it may not be cheap to everyone, it's a little bit more affordable.
And it could potentially, if somebody's younger, perhaps hasn't got the money to buy a top of the range model, it could get somebody into, as you say, into that Apple ecosystem.
And then in 10 years time when they've got more money, they could be spending more on a more market phone.
It could be the introduction that Apple is hoping will lead to more sales down the line.
And let's be honest, there are potential tariffs as well that we may see impact the US as well as Europe and Africa markets.
So I think they're very much trying to offer much cheaper products, not just for that Apple ecosystem introduction, but also recognising that the future is a little bit unknowable when it comes to the bottom line, when it comes to revenue.
Let's talk a little bit about those markets outside of the US, because we were wondering whether cheaper iPhones could help Apple to win over countries where Android dominates.
Nigeria is a country where 85 % of smartphone users use Android.
And a little earlier on, I spoke to Joel Sipram, who is a wholesale seller of phones and accessories in Lagos.
We won't put it as being cheaper.
That's not the issue.
An average Nigerian can afford at least an iPhone 6s, an iPhone 7, because the price range is between $9 ,000, $70 ,000 to $100 ,000.
So it's not so much.
But the issue there is iOS is difficult to use.
Not everyone can use iOS.
We have older generations.
iOS isn't a better option for them.
They'd rather go for Android version that is more complex, even if the phone is cheap or not.
So you think even if Apple made some very reasonably priced phones, they still would struggle to take markets away from Android phones?
They will still struggle, definitely.
Even some younger generation still don't even know how to go through their iPhones.
Within people who are maybe struggling to afford mobile phones, do you think people would rather go for a cheaper phone brand new?
Or do people go for second -hand phones more?
People go for second -hand phones more.
And they will still go for cheaper new phones too.
So when it comes to iOS, when it comes to Apple phones, people go for second -hand.
In amongst the Android phones that get sold, are there any brands, does Samsung have the lead there or are brands like Huawei, for example, getting in there?
No, Huawei is very much expensive here in Nigeria.
It's not really acceptable here in Nigeria because, for one, you're talking about a phone with parts that has the parts in the market.
Samsung isn't an option because, for one, Samsung is very expensive.
Samsung parts, especially the screen, the cost of a Samsung phone and the cost of the screen of a Samsung phone is likely almost the same.
So why would I use a Samsung phone when if I have a broken screen, I will spend almost the same price of the phone to get the screen repaired or replaced.
So a cheaper Android phone, which Infinix, Tecno and ITL are a better option.
Redmi brand under Xiaomi is actually making wave here in Nigeria.
What you say about repairs is quite interesting.
Is there a big repair market out there?
And if people were to bring out a phone that was easier to fix, would that be popular?
Yes. If you're able to bring out a phone and has its parts in the country, it will certainly be easier to fix.
It will go through, it will be acceptable by everyone in Nigeria.
That's Joel Sipram speaking to me from Nigeria earlier.
Takara, that's a very valid point he makes.
Are we going to see manufacturers?
There's been a lot of campaigning to make phones more repairable.
Are we likely to see it?
We are. And honestly, this has been one of Apple's Achilles heels for a very, very long time.
But we're starting to see some momentum.
There's the right to repair movement that's gone global, which is asking companies to make it a little bit easier for an individual to repair their own phone without having to pay for the company itself to.
But, you know, Apple has a program.
It's called the Self Repair Program, where individuals can actually purchase tools and hardware and do that themselves.
But I think the biggest aspect, and I can only imagine Apple has implemented this because they, again, know there are a lot of customers who buy secondhand.
It's their repair provider program.
So people now can go to authorized sellers and dealers who can fix devices, whether it's an iPhone or a laptop.
And really it's because there are so many people, especially outside of North America, who want to update an old phone, who want to hang on to that device much longer.
And strong environmental arguments as well.
Takara Small, technology reporter with CBC in Canada, thank you for speaking to us.
We are joined by Susanna Street, a head of Money & Markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Susanna, that's, I mean, as Takara said there, Apple have seen a bit of a dip in iPhone sales.
Could this be the push they need to start increasing sales again?
Yeah, it's certainly an interesting move.
And on that last point, we have a veritable, in my house, repair shop going on with my gaggle of teenagers.
I know how expensive it can be to repair phones.
And so certainly this lower cost model, a new phone, I think will be attractive.
What is interesting is that this phone also supports Apple intelligence.
So it's intelligence, it's Apple's least expensive new phone that can access features like image generation.
And I don't think the market is fully really priced in to what extent Apple's artificial intelligence platform will become an ecosystem.
system capable of offering complete privacy to its users, which will be another selling point, I think, for Apple in the future, because all of the computing is handled by the properly equipped device itself or its own private servers.
And I think this will kind of come into its own and people will catch on more about this in the future.
A big selling point for a lot of people, I'm sure.
We just want to ask you quickly about Airbus, because we've talked a lot about some of the troubles that Boeing have had, particularly with their space business?
They're certainly not alone in this.
No, although overall, you look at the total revenues, increased 6 % over the 2023 figure.
And also, what you saw was some pretty good numbers or improving numbers anyway, in terms of Airbus helicopters revenues, increasing 8 % with many more units being delivered.
Certainly the military role it supplies is crucial right now, it appears.
Susanna, thank you very much for joining us.
We may well speak to you later in the programme.
You are with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now, Germany's once mighty motor industry is losing momentum as high costs, low demand and competition from Chinese firms take a heavy toll on company profits.
With elections in just a few days' time now.
Theo Leggett has been to the city of Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony to find out what do Germany's politicians need to do to put the industry on the road to recovery.
When you step off the train at Wolfsburg Central Station, the first thing you see is the Volkswagen factory.
Its huge facade with its four tall chimneys and giant Volkswagen logo dominates one bank of the canal that runs through the city.
We're standing in front of the 1886 Benz patent motor car.
Just next door to the factory is the Autostadt, a vast theme park devoted to Volkswagen.
It's there I met with Dieter Landenberger, Volkswagen's in -house historian.
The whole region is dependent on Volkswagen.
In terms of how people feel about the plant in Wolfsburg and about Volkswagen and indeed the whole motor industry, it must be a source of some considerable pride.
Yeah, Volkswagen, it's a symbol of the German economy.
In the 1950s, when Germany had to reinvent itself, Volkswagen became very important because it was a kind of motto of the so -called economic miracle in West Germany.
So yeah, it became a synonym for made in Germany almost on every continent.
But today, the Wolfsburg plant has become a symbol of something else.
The malaise affecting the German motor industry as a whole.
Factories across the country are operating well below their maximum capacity.
And that's not just a problem for Volkswagen or its fellow giants BMW and Mercedes -Benz.
It affects the economy as a whole.
The car sector is the biggest subsector within German industry.
It's 20 percent of Germany's manufacturing output.
Francisca Palmas is a senior Europe economist at Capital Economics.
So it's around 6 % of German GDP if we also count all the suppliers.
And the car sector has also been a big driver of growth in Germany.
But if you'll forgive me a bad pun, the brakes have now come on, haven't they?
What's gone wrong? Car sales in Europe have been declining since 2017.
Lately they've recovered a bit, but they're still around 15 to 20 % lower than they were at the peak.
That's partly the pandemic, the energy crisis.
Another problem is this transition from the conventional internal combustion engine cars to EVs.
But what do the car makers themselves actually make of all of this?
And what do they want to see from the next German government?
Well, to find out, I've come to Berlin and the imposing stone neoclassical headquarters of the German Automobile Industry Association, the VDA.
There are so many crises.
I mean, even when one crisis is over or kind of over, the next one's coming up.
So we're kind of saying crisis is a new normal.
Simon Schutz is a spokesman for the VDA, which represents Germany's manufacturers.
The energy prices in Germany are three to five times what people of companies are paying in China or the US.
That's a very big difference.
Then we have, and everyone's talking about it, a huge bureaucracy in Brussels, And Mario Tragi said in his report that the concept of regulation failed.
So we need to come up with new and better solutions because right now we regulate everything.
That report from Theo Leggett and you can hear more in Business Daily.
Just search wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Now, North Korea is now open to Western tourists.
It's the first time since the pandemic that people have been allowed to take trips into this highly secretive state.
But many people might ask why you'd want to.
Well, there are a lot of people who want more from a vacation than just a week on the beach.
Some tourists are heading to inaccessible areas, war zones, even the restriction zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine.
Rowan Beard is one of the co -founders of Young Pioneer Tours.
He's been to North Korea more than 100 times and he told me what sort of destinations they offer.
We started with North Korea and so the people that were interested in going to North Korea would also give us other suggestions of things that they were interested in.
So some of the first few that we heard were, hey, you guys should do Chernobyl or like, hey, this is actually kind of lines up with my interest with Iran or Syria.
And so, yeah, people give us some ideas.
We follow the demand.
We look further into it.
We find a reliable contacts.
We go there to check it out ourselves and we open it up.
And, yeah, it continues to grow from there.
We have to say these are not your typical beach holidays.
Why do people want to go to places like this?
There's a mixed amount of interest why people want to go to these places.
It's either they're specifically interested, they've read about it, or they've seen it in a movie, or these are people, which is very common these days.
There are people out there that do want to visit every country in the world, all 193 UN -recognised countries.
And so, yeah, to complete that, you will have to go to these countries as well.
And there's no shying away from the fact that these are some dangerous places.
How do you deal with that?
How do you cope with operating and taking people to environments like that?
Not all the destinations we go to are dangerous.
Like, we also work in the least visited countries, which tend to be like in the Pacific Ocean, like Tuvalu, Kiribati, Nauru.
The most dangerous tours I would say we operate, like Tier 1 red level, is Mogadishu, Somalia, Ukraine, and previously Syria.
But, you know, now we're watching that situation unfold.
And, yeah, we're being a bit cautious about that.
But we have outside experts that we work with who have had experience in these places for many years.
And we've been in contact with locals, our local partners there, who are on the ground and give us updates.
And yeah, we consider these things very closely.
We don't just send people there by themselves as well.
When we arrange these group tours, there is either myself or either of my 20 full -time guides that work for us.
So yeah, we closely monitor and sometimes we do have to pull the plug.
For example, Marlene Bakino Faso, at the moment we feel like the situation security there isn't good.
So we're currently halted to us there.
So to talk about North Korea in particular, North Korea has now opened up to Westerners for the first time in several years.
Have you got a queue of people waiting to go there?
What is it that they're hoping to see?
So North Korea were the very first country to close during the pandemic.
They closed on January 23, 2020.
And I was one of the last Westerners to exit the country on January 11, 2020.
And it coincides with me being the first Westerner to return, which was just last week on Thursday.
But yeah, five years is a long time.
Over that five years, we received about 5 ,000 requests of people wanting to be notified when it does reopen.
So hence now, Rasa and Bean opening, we are pretty, you know, we're getting a lot of demand.
But there are still a few people out there that are waiting for Pyongyang, the capital, to reopen because that's more of their interest.
And what could I expect to see if I were to go with you to North Korea tomorrow?
Oh, great. I would love to take you to North Korea tomorrow.
But we do have a restriction on journalists, but everyone else is welcome except those traveling on a U .S., South Korean or Japanese passport.
But if you come with me to Rason, the special economic zone of North Korea, here we see things that you don't usually get to be able to see elsewhere in the country.
So we get to visit factories.
We get to have more hands -on with schools, like meeting the foreign language school where the students know English, and you can have one -on -one conversations with them.
We see the tri -border of Russia, China, and North Korea, which is fairly unique.
One of my highlights is visiting the beer brewery.
where they make locally brewed beer.
80 % is consumed in the country, 20 % is exported.
So when you go to some cities near the North Korean border and China, you can sample this beer.
And yeah, it's pretty good.
And in fact, our Korean producer on World Business Report confirms that it is a very good beer and he's tried it.
Rowan Beard there, one of the co -founders of Young Pioneer Tours.
Other North Korean beers are available, I'm sure.
I'm joined now by Oskar Zakrzewski, who's been on some of these tours and is joining us now live um oscar if my notes are correct you have been to a soviet nuclear bomb testing site in kazakhstan is that correct uh yeah that's right yeah towards uh yeah what was it the end of last year yeah what was it
that encouraged you to do that um i don't know the intrigue really and uh being being um interested in the soviet union i guess and uh going to a new country you must realize though that there are risks in going to places like this uh you know more so than just going to a beach holiday somewhere um
yeah i mean sort of i've been to a lot of countries and you know it's not been that safe and then i've been to countries with ypt like iran or kazakhstan and it's been completely fine and people have been amazing so i don't know i i feel safe safety is just uh it's just your your your way of thinking
really um yeah i mean kazakhstan and uh the nuclear weapons site was was completely fine and um yeah we we did have to wear hazmat suits but other than that it was a fine yeah and it's definitely an experience that most most of your friends of people you meet in the uk won't have experienced yeah true
yeah i don't know not not many people talk about going to these places but I think everyone is intrigued everyone wants to uh hear about it you know let me ask you quickly because I believe you haven't been to North Korea but would quite like to uh are you planning on going what and why is it you want
to go there um it's yeah I would like to go hopefully I'll go in April um it's just the intrigue and the unknown I guess not really knowing what to expect and um just going somewhere which is completely different to the western world and what we're used to.
Oscar, thank you very much.
Oscar Zakrzewski, proving there is a market for holidays outside of your standard package beach tour.
Thank you very much for joining us here on World Business Report.
More online, bbc .com slash news.
