Life for Cambodians has long been tough, but not like this.
They will listen to the explosions every day and night and they don't know what to do with their lives.
Hundreds of thousands are either fleeing or hiding from a border war with Thailand.
We never go out.
We're afraid and scared about everything outside.
There is nothing now.
That's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Bye.
I'm Ed Butler, and today we're going to be looking at what's happening inside Cambodia, amidst that escalating border conflict with Thailand, with incursions going deeper into Cambodian territory from a seemingly more powerful foe.
What are the economic consequences for Cambodia?
Also, we're looking at the sliding global oil price and what Nigerians do for fun this time of year.
We will begin though, in the border region of Thailand and Cambodia where, for several weeks now, there has been intensifying military conflict.
The sound there of Thai troops advancing into Cambodian territory.
Cambodia and Thailand have been fighting over a long-standing border dispute, with both accusing the other of escalating the conflict.
Dozens of people have been killed and around a million have been displaced, it's reckoned, most of them on the Cambodian side.
Here are some responses from Cambodians affected by the fighting.
We never go out.
We're afraid and scared about everything outside.
There is nothing now.
We want peace like before, not like this.
Before, Thais and Cambodians lived together and got along well.
But now it's not the same as before.
When they announced for Thais to evacuate, they all had shelters to go to.
But Cambodians don't have anywhere to go.
They will listen to the explosions every day and night and they don't know what to do with their lives.
They are in danger.
Their lives are at risk.
While the conflict's having a dramatic effect, it seems, on Cambodia's economy.
The BBC's been hearing from Sivlin Chai.
She's president of the Cambodia Tourism Association.
A 20 drop since international arrivals since the beginning of this conflict in May.
This is development we are watching closely, as the industry was previously on a very strong recovery path.
However, it is important to distinguish between geography of countries.
We are deeply sad by the nature of these events.
We have seen actions that unfortunately reach deep into our civilian areas, including recent reports of activity as far as 80 kilometers into Siem Reap province.
From our perspective, this strategy seems designed to disrupt Cambodia's tourism industry during our most vital high season.
Well, Thailand says its defence minister will be joining ongoing talks with neighbouring Cambodia on Saturday.
These could lead to a truce between the two countries, according to the prime minister, although there's been no immediate comment on that from Cambodia itself.
Here's Thailand's caretaker PM, Anuten Chan-Nivarko.
Anuten Chan-Nivarko.
The key issue following the National Security Council meeting is that we have agreed for the Thai Defence Minister to attend the General Border Committee meeting with his Cambodian counterpart tomorrow.
I hope this will be the final signing so that peace can be achieved in the area and people can return to their homes.
I hope the Defence Minister shares the same view.
Well, Dr. Sam Soon is a policy analyst of the Royal Academy of Cambodia.
I began by asking him to tell me more about the economic impacts that he's seeing about the fighting.
There are three main provinces of Cambodia, namely Battambang, Bantaymenche, and Toipat.
Those three provinces mainly exported the agricultural products to Thailand.
For example, cassava, rice, cashew nut.
And Thailand also imported a lot of products.
Cambodia is the main market for Thailand to sell their products.
So all of that has stopped, has it?
I mean, has really border trade has completely dried up?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Right now we're completely stopped because both sides, they closed the border.
So the economy is almost 100% stopped, yes.
I was seeing that there were as many as 700000 Cambodian migrant workers, forced many of them to come back from Thailand.
Is that right?
Yes, that is right, because we have many Cambodian workers that go to Thailand just to find a job.
So we've got a $5 billion border trade with Thailand.
That's stopped.
You've also got, I suppose, impacts further afield.
We've been hearing from the Tourist Association there in Cambodia.
How are visitor numbers?
Tourism is a big part, I guess, of Cambodia's traditional economy.
Because Cambodia we have the World Heritage Temple, Angkor Wat Temple and also other ancient temples.
So during this time, Thailand, they bombed many places.
And including in Siem Reap province, that is our World Heritage Temple.
So tourists, they feel not safe to go to visit any places.
Are you saying that the bombing has really come close to Angkor Wat, the famous World Heritage Site?
Yes, because they bomb deep inside Cambodia, 70 to 90 kilometers recently.
Because I'm a bit famous in Cambodia, so there are many foreigners that come to visit Phnom Penh and talk to me.
And then I ask them, are you going to visit Siem Reap?
They say no.
The embassy advised them not to visit Siem Reap during this time.
Tourists.
They always care about their security and they always listen to the instructions of the embassy.
Thailand says that one of the main justifications for its incursions into Cambodian territory is the number of scam centres that litter the border area of Cambodia and Thailand.
These centres were making millions and millions of dollars out of scamming people around the world right.
And they're run by criminal networks, criminal gangs.
The Cambodian government is accused of letting them carry on.
That is the argument that the Thais are using here.
Is there a sense that this is going to disrupt the scam trade which is a big part of the regional economy there, in those border regions of Cambodia?
I have to say that, based on the reports of the United Nations, there are four countries that mainly related to scams.
We have like Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.
In Thailand, they have their big population and many Thai people work in international medias.
And Thailand just like to excuse other country.
If they just care on the scam center.
So why they bomb on many provinces and why they bomb on the house of the people?
If you look back with the Myanmar and Thailand issue, Myanmar, they have the scam problems.
And Myanmar even bomb along the border with Thailand.
But Thailand did not say anything.
Thailand just say, we need peace, blah, blah, blah.
Because Thailand could not fight with Myanmar.
Myanmar lead by military, they don't care.
So they will fight.
And Thailand, they know that they could not fight with Myanmar.
So that is why they just provoke the problems with a smaller country like Cambodia, because they know that they will win the fighting.
So that is why they just keep saying with Cambodia to destroy the scam center.
So but why not with Myanmar?
If you read the articles, if you read the news, you will see Myanmar has the biggest issue than Cambodia.
So why they don't care about Myanmar?
Because they cannot fight with Myanmar.
They just can fight with a smaller country.
That's a Cambodian perspective on the border war with Thailand.
Dr Sam Sayon, speaking to me from the capital, Phnom Penh.
New Zealand has a productivity problem, and it's one that's persisted for decades, economists say.
Despite the country's reputation for pragmatic innovation, it ranks near the bottom of OECD, that's the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, its league table of wealthier nations' productivity growth.
Now, artificial intelligence does promise to change everything, of course, in New Zealand as elsewhere.
But can a nation famous for its quick fixes embrace the systemic transformation that AI demands?
In the first of a three-part AI series, our correspondent Alex Funvell reports from Marlborough, at the top of New Zealand's South Island.
This is a tractor and on the front of the tractor it's got a forklift and we use this forklift the upward motion of the forklift to lift old vines out of the soil.
In a vineyard workshop in Marlborough, Artsfield grape grower Ben Cowley demonstrates something quintessentially Kiwi.
What locals call number eight?
Wire ingenuity.
As you can see, on this forklift we have a piece of metal bar that sticks out either side, which takes a chain.
The problem was that the bar had begun to bend as the vines were pulled up.
We just came up with a good way of reinforcing it by putting a chain through the middle of the existing bar and strapping it up over the top to take most of the strain of pulling out the wires rather than having to replace the whole unit.
15 minutes work and cost us 15 minutes of labour rather than probably what was going to be a 1000 improvement job with an engineer.
So is this number 8 wire technology?
This is number eight wire technology at its core use in New Zealand.
This is what we do.
The phrase comes from the use of scraps of farm fencing wire to make do, make it work and move on.
New Zealand's had a long history in terms of its farming prowess, and now we have to integrate technology into every facet, every process of Business.
Advisor Justin Flitter runs New Zealand AI.
He says the celebrated number eight wire approach now a core part of business culture here might actually be an impediment when it comes to AI.
Absolutely.
We don't need to reinvent things.
Solutions already exist.
Let me break it down.
New Zealand sits in the lower third of the OECD on labour output per hour.
AI could help improve productivity, but it calls for ground-up systemic change, not a quick number-eight-wire approach.
It's not just at that top end of how do we build an AI model or how are we using robotics.
It's actually how are we integrating artificial intelligence into every process and every worker, from the CEO to the receptionist at the front door.
But in a landscape of small firms and limited AI specialists, adoption is always going to be slow.
Chair of a government AI advisory panel, Professor Michael Whitbrock, explains.
We tend to have reasonably small businesses.
And one of the things is that we tend not to have all the people that we need in order to move on an opportunity.
For Whitbrock, it's not about replacing people.
He says AI can help improve productivity when people or skills are lacking.
So in New Zealand in particular, the ability to add AI agents, AI support, to roles in business can be a dramatic enabler, especially for businesses which are more unusual and may have more unusual staffing needs.
Back amongst the vines at Arnsfield vineyard, manager Corbin Moore is stoical about the coming technological change.
Yeah, I'm starting to see that AI can pick up.
There's potential there for disease monitoring, spray monitoring.
So density of canopies, even to the point of the amount of spray you put onto a canopy based on what it's seeing.
There's little sense of urgency over AI in Marlborough, but not every industry may have wine's luxury of time.
That's Alex Funvell with that report from New Zealand.
Making AI work.
You're with World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
Now, as 2025 draws to a close, we're going to be looking back now at one particular commodity that has long been a barometer of the health, or indeed the ill health, of the global economy.
It's the oil industry.
It has had a few bumps along the road in 2026, it's fair to say.
Back in January, the global price of West Texas crude rose to almost 80 a barrel, but today it's languishing around 56, driven south by falling demand and by some of the considerable geopolitical noise that's out there.
Joining us to discuss this is Neil Atkinson.
He's an energy analyst and a former head of the oil industry and markets division at the International Energy Agency.
Hi, Neil.
Thanks for being with us.
Let's start then.
I mean, it's fair to say that the oil price is being governed, isn't it by a sense of foreboding?
Right now, depressed demand, too much supply.
I mean, how do you see it?
What's the key factor right now in this crisis? gradually sliding figure we're seeing.
Well, you're right to say that demand growth is tepid.
Demand certainly isn't falling.
It's just not growing particularly fast.
And on the other side of the balance, you've got plenty of supply out there, not least supply growth from the United States, from Brazil, from Canada, Guyana.
And, of course, earlier this year, members of the OPEC Plus Alliance decided to release the or relieve the output restrictions that they put in place a couple of years before.
So we've got tepid demand.
We've got plenty of supply out there.
Geopolitical fears are actually subsiding rather than increasing.
In the middle of the year, of course, we had the Iranian-Israeli conflict.
That tension has now gone away.
So we're focusing on the fundamentals.
Weak demand growth, plenty of supply.
It's interesting.
I mean, you just mentioned OPEC+.
OPEC has basically given up on regulating the price, has it?
The non-OPEC members out there are just producing too much.
Well, it's not a question of giving up.
I mean they realised that if they were to continue to restrict their output to the extent that they were doing until the middle of this year, all they would be doing would be ceding market share to the likes of the United States Canada, Brazil and Guyana.
And they found in the past that that really is a mug's game.
So they have to accept, whether they like it or not, that the current market conditions do not see any possibility of oil prices rising into the 70s or the 80s, which is the kind of levels that they would prefer.
And frankly, they just have to suck up this current market reality.
Weaker demand growth, plenty of supply.
Let's look at the geopolitics for a moment then.
You've referred to this.
There were some dramatic figures I saw coming out a week or so ago showing that Russian crude and Russian crude oil exports are about what?
10 of the global supply, I think.
They're down in the low 30s in terms of This is because of US sanctions, which are restricting the purchasing of perhaps the former buyers from India and China, who were diving in pretty heavily into cheaper Russian oil.
Has that been a factor, do you think, in at least maintaining the price?
How big a factor is the Russia situation in terms of the course or the direction of travel for the oil price generally?
Well, a few weeks ago, the Americans announced sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, which are two of the biggest Russian oil producers and exporters.
And the feeling at that time was that if those sanctions were actually effective and those companies were not able to put barrels into the global oil market, that could lead to well.
It would lead to lower supply and that might send some upward pressure on the price.
But the problem with it is is that the Russia, United States, Ukraine peace talks seem to ebb and flow.
One day it's optimistic, the next it's pessimistic, and no one really has a clear picture.
And while you're right to say that some Indian and Chinese buyers have been more reluctant to take Russian barrels than has generally been the case since the invasion of Ukraine,
To all intents and purposes, the Russians are still managing to export plenty of oil, although a lot of it is actually sitting on ships, without necessarily having a final buyer or a final destination.
So the Russian situation is very fluid.
And we just have to see almost from day to day the progress of the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks.
Yes.
So in a brief thought, I mean, let's just assume there isn't an imminent peace deal.
I mean, I'm going to guess one way or the other.
But if we take that as the assumption, what are your expectations for 2026?
Is it going to be a flat year for the oil price?
Well, in 2026, if we assume, for the sake of argument, that significant volumes of Russian oil do continue to find their way into the market by fair means or foul, we must also assume that the outlook for global oil demand is going to remain relatively tepid and we are going to see more supply coming into the market from the US Canada, Guyana and elsewhere, but not at the same rate as we've seen in 2025.
Therefore, as we move through the early part of 2026, it is possible to see the market moving closer to balance.
In other words there will not be such a big surplus of supply over demand and prices could find some support in the mid 60s for Brent, around 70 a barrel possibly, but not immediately.
All right, Neil Atkinson, thank you very much indeed.
Well, I'm joined now by Ethan Wade.
He's Chief Development Officer and Senior Vice President of Brighton Securities in Rochester, New York.
Hi, Ethan.
On the oil, I mean, it's an old one, this, isn't it?
The markets care if big oil firms lose out, of course, and oil prices tumble.
But a lower oil price does drive the rest of the economy.
It allows the Fed to cut rates for one thing, doesn't it?
It does.
And a lower cost for businesses from a transportation perspective and a manufacturing perspective is helpful.
As you and Neil mentioned, it historically has been a barometer of global output.
And so, seeing those lower prices, you know some of the concern is if those prices are staying lower because US growth has slowed or China has not rebounded from a longer term.
That can be a bigger concern, but certainly helpful for business in the short term.
OK, speaking of barometers, look at the metals.
They've had a pretty good time, haven't they, recently?
We've got copper rising to a record high, crossing the $12,000 a ton mark.
I mean, let's do quickly on copper.
What's going on here?
Is this all to do with the energy transition and that kind of thing?
Well, it's part of it.
And so, while we talk about a depressed year for energy, it's almost the exact opposite when we talk about metals.
And it's on the backdrop of we've had some supply disruptions.
Tariff concerns have been pretty significant and they've been looming overhead.
And then we've also had the increased demand for artificial intelligence and data centers.
So On.
The almost exact opposite of energy, where demand had fallen and supply had increased.
When it comes to metals, whether it's copper platinum, gold or silver, demand has increased significantly.
Supply has been constrained.
Prices have been pushed towards record levels.
Yeah.
And record levels for all the other metals on the gold silver, platinum.
Palladium had an extraordinary day.
But anyway, listen, quick word, a final word on deal making.
I'm seeing the Financial Times reporting that deal making has topped four trillion dollars this year.
This is just the handful of mega deals, right?
The likes of Warners and Netflix and all the others who we've been talking about lately.
I mean, are you seeing this carrying on into 2026?
Well, based on where interest rates are, it's a likelihood that this can continue.
And we mentioned it's also more than just a handful of deals.
There have been almost 70 deals this year, worth 10 billion or more, spanning across almost every industry, whether it's Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern looking to make the first American transcontinental railroad deal, whether it is Kimberly-Clark acquiring Kenview or, most recently certainly, Netflix and Warner Brothers.
This level of activity signals that corporations and investors are betting on long-term growth and overlooking some of the short-term uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment.
Ethan Wade, thank you very much indeed.
Let's go to Nigeria now where Deti December is proving to be big business.
This is the festive period at the end of the year when many Nigerians abroad travel back to see family and to party.
Let's hear more about what Deti December actually is and how much money it brings in.
It's something I asked our reporter Bissi Adebayo about.
So Dete December is the nickname for that big end-of-year rush in Nigeria where concerts, parties and festivals take over, especially in Lagos, the commercial capital of the country.
You see people flying from across the country and the diaspora to celebrate.
And I can confirm this to you, even as a Nigerian myself, that...
It has become a huge cultural moment.
But not just that.
It has a serious or huge economic impact, as explained by Muda Youssef, Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise.
The impact has been phenomenal, particularly in the cities of Nigeria.
You've got the level of transactions, you know, that happens during 30 December.
It's quite high and it impacts practically in all sectors of the economy.
We have very big diaspora population that comes for this 30 December.
And of course, the spending and all of that, the transactions are forced on level of inflation.
But the capacity to spend is also there.
You know, we have a very weak currency.
And when they come with all this foreign currency, it doesn't matter so much.
So quite a number of inflationary effects.
That's Moda Youssef there from the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise.
So what does this mean for business then?
For many businesses, December can make or break the year, so to speak, because hotels are packed, flights are full, event planners are flat out.
And it's also a chance, you know, for many of these businesses to earn in a few weeks what might normally take months.
And to see how that works on ground.
I had a chat with one of the businesses cashing in this season, Remy Adeliki, who's events producer and CEO of Cruise Events in Lagos.
We start preparing as early as January for the next December, because it's an industry that is still growing.
And if we don't start to prepare in advance, we lose the risk of losing the best hands in terms of equipment rentals, skilled crew, getting the right security firm, power generations.
The large-scale concerts and festivals have made the 30th of December quite busy, with the corporate brand activations, private parties, weddings and the experiential events.
But the flip side is that the demand has grown faster than the infrastructure.
Majority of the problem we actually face in this part of the world is actually human resource.
The demand for skilled professionals has actually increased dramatically within this very short window, especially the fact that a lot of concerts and festivals and corporate events are happening at the same time, simultaneously.
For example, during December, a sound engineer or a stage manager might be booked across three or four major events on the same day and they have to look for a way to manage themselves across, but without even giving you prior notice that they have multiple events.
Remy Adeleki and that was Bissi Adebayo talking to me.
That's it for World Business Report from me and the team.
Take care.
