Businesses close and tourists are told to stay away as wildfires hit southwest France.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Luke Wilson.
Oil prices fall more than 6% after a pause in attacks between Iran and the US, and we'll hear why Japanese stores selling Pokemon cards are bringing in facial recognition.
Wildfires are continuing to sweep across parts of France and Spain, forcing more than 325,000 people from their homes.
Businesses have been forced to close, transport links have been disrupted and hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated at the height of the summer holiday season.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron has held crisis talks and says he will visit the southwest of the country as wildfires threaten the city of Bordeaux.
Roland Lescure is France's economy minister.
All French insurers have committed to ensuring that anyone who has been displaced can have their temporary accommodation costs reimbursed in accordance with the terms of their insurance policy, whether or not their home has been damaged.
This of course is extremely important.
Today, in the Gironde alone, more than 13,000 businesses have been evacuated and are, of course, unable to continue operating normally.
Earlier, I spoke to Chris Bachmann.
He's a journalist based in Toulouse in southwest France.
This is really bad for businesses in this area because the head of the Chamber of Commerce for the Bordeaux area
Has just said himself that up to 14,000 businesses are closed or partly closed because of the confinement issues that the government's put in place.
And that's impacting between 100 and 150,000 people.
And he's called this the biggest impact on the local economy since COVID back in 2020.
That gives you an idea.
And this region, we know it as a wine-growing region, but what industries are there?
Which ones might be affected by this?
There's so many that could be impacted.
First of all, the government's chief representative for the region has just said no tourists should be coming down there right now.
And this is, of course, July, August.
When so many come down here in such a well-known for its beautiful beaches, for the wine growing and wine tasting.
So the tourism will be hugely impacted.
But not only that, Cap Ferret, which is also considered the Hamptons or the Nantucket or Cape Cod of France,
It has a lot of tourists and oyster growing there.
It might sound like it's not very important, but France, I think, is the third biggest oyster consumer in the world.
And so they're a major consumer of oysters and they grow them there.
And with the fumes from these fires, quite toxic and people having to wear kind of COVID era masks again, you wonder how the wine growing industry will be impacted.
You wonder how the oysters will be impacted.
And on top of that, just outside Bordeaux, it's a major, along with Toulouse, a major aerospace center.
This is where a lot of the drones are made for the French military.
This is where the aerial rocket gets partly built here.
You've got Dassault, who make the Rafale fighter jet, is based here.
And all these the flames are really lapping on the perimeter of all these companies.
And they're, of course, partly closed down as well.
So it's not only just about the businesses, it's also about French national sovereignty at stake because the aerospace industry down here is so important.
And I know you've been in Bordeaux yourself recently when there was a heat wave last month.
Does it feel like businesses and, of course, people there are just having to deal with one thing after another when it comes to these weather events?
Well, let me just tell you that tomorrow temperatures are expected to hit 40 degrees again across the southwest, including Bordeaux.
This will be the fourth heat wave before August.
And having come through three of these already, I can tell you it has a major impact on the economy because nobody, from a tourist point of view, nobody wants to go out shopping.
You don't want to go out eating for a start because it's way too hot.
The beaches where you can go to the beaches are actually the sand was scalding when I was there.
So you couldn't actually even go onto the beaches there.
So the impact on the economy when heat waves are hitting 43, 44 a day is huge.
People just don't do anything in that kind of weather.
Chris Bachman speaking to me from southwest France.
Rachel Winter is partner and investment manager at Killik & Co. And Rachel, looking at the oil price, traders seem to be reassured by this pause in strikes between the US and Iran.
They do.
So we've had no strikes now since Friday.
So that has been very reassuring to the market.
Oil was trading at over $100 per barrel and it's come down to about $86 per barrel at the moment.
So
That's bad news for oil companies because they're now looking less profitable.
So, if we look at how oil stocks are trading on the stock market, they're all in negative territory today.
But it is generally good news for the rest of the market.
So, for example, companies that use a lot of energy, they stand to benefit.
So, they're very much in the green today.
And elsewhere we've had results from the fast fashion giant Shein and it looks like tariffs have had a big impact there.
Yes.
So, tariffs in the US are now being applied to smaller packages, which Shane does provide.
So, they have really lost out from that.
They have confirmed they were loss-making in the first quarter of this year.
And that is bad news for them because they are gearing up for an IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
So, being loss-making in the first quarter is not going to be as appealing to investors.
Rachel Winter from Kellick & Co.
Thank you.
China's leading memory chip maker has seen its share price climb almost 500% on its market debut in Shanghai.
CXMT briefly became China's most valuable company and raised close to $10 billion.
Beijing is aiming to strengthen its position in the booming artificial intelligence industry
And this comes after the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix made a record-breaking debut in the US earlier this month.
Indonesia's economy is facing fresh uncertainty after the surprise resignation of its central bank governor.
Periwajiro stepped down two years before the end of his term, citing personal reasons.
It's as investors and economists say they're concerned about how policies are affecting growth in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
I spoke to Joshua Paraday, who is chief economist at Permatabank Indonesia.
I think the governor's resignation matters because it comes at a sensitive point for financial stability.
When the rupiah is under heavy pressure, global interest rates remain high and investors are closely assessing Indonesia's policy credibility.
However, it shouldn't be interpreted as institutional crisis.
Bank Indonesia's policy decisions are made collectively by the board of governors rather than by the governor alone.
And you've talked a bit there about Indonesia's domestic challenges.
You talked about the rupiah.
What about internationally?
You know, we've seen oil prices fluctuate massively because of the war in the Middle East.
What impact does that have on Indonesia's economy?
Yeah, I think Rupiah weakness makes Bank Indonesia task significantly harder because the central bank must defend current currency stability without placing excessive pressure on the domestic growth.
As you can see in the last two months in May and June,
The Santa Bank has raised the policy rate by 100 basis points or 1% in order to defend the Rupiah stability.
Because as per latest data, as per July this year, Rupiah had weakened almost around 7% year to date.
And this is one of the weakest Asian currencies if we compare with Indian Rupiah, if we compare with Thai baht.
I think this limits the scope of our interest rate cuts, even when domestic demand and investment would benefit from lowering financing costs.
I think the problem is more difficult because the exchange rate pressure
Is not simply a domestic monetary issue.
It reflects high global yields, geopolitical uncertainty, capital flow volatility.
The government should do the policy correction to some policies that seem to be responded negatively by the foreign investors in order to boost the confidence to support the assessment from the credit rating agencies.
The questions on the quality of spending
Will be still on the table.
So that's why the government should improve the quality of spending, the quality of fiscal balance sheet.
Joshua Paraday, Chief Economist at Permata Bank Indonesia.
And finally, Pokemon is introducing facial recognition at its official card stores in Japan to stop resellers.
Customers will need to consent to the technology before receiving an entry ticket, with the system designed to prevent people from entering or making purchases more than once a day.
The company says facial data will be stored securely in line with its privacy policy.
That's it from World Business Express.
I'm Luke Wilson.
Thanks very much for listening.
