The final day of this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos is getting under way.
World leaders and business chiefs will be considering what lies ahead in 2024, after several days spent discussing crucial issues such as support for Ukraine, the potential and risks of AI, the Middle East crisis and the global energy transition.
Davos will wrap up with the traditional set-piece panel on the global economic outlook, where key figures including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization, and Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, will speak.
Lagarde’s views on the outlook for interest rates will be interesting, after global stocks and bond markets weakened this week as hopes of early cuts to borrowing costs faded.
The experts in Davos fear that the the global economic outlook is fraught with uncertainty. A WEF survey of top economists this week found that more than half expect the world economy to weaken this year.
Any escalation of the Middle East conflict risks further disruption to shipping and could push up energy prices – adding to inflation and slowing growth.
During his visit to Davos, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has been reiterating the four things that must happen for a peaceful solution to the Israel-Hamas war: a Palestinian-led government in Gaza and the West Bank, a concrete plan to help reform and support the Palestinian Authority, a major reconstruction plan for Gaza, and a political horizon towards a two-state solution.
But the news overnight that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told the Biden White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza is a sharp pushback against pressure for a two-state solution.
Last night in Davos, Google announced it had started construction on a new $1bn (£789m) data centre in the UK.
The news came as the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, met business leaders at the WEF, as he tried to promote “British excellence” in the technology sector.
The new facility will be at Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, bought by Google in October 2020.
The agenda
• 9am CET/8am GMT: a session on the electoral outlook for 2024
• 10.15am CET/9.15am GMT: a session on how to deal with emerging risks and rapid shocks
• 10.15am CET/9.15am GMT: a session on the prospects for the Middle East in 2024
• 11am CET/10am GMT: the global economic outlook, with Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the president of Singapore, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the director general of the World Trade Organization, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, the minister of finance of Saudi Arabia, David Rubenstein, a co-chair of the Carlyle Group, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, and Christian Lindner, Germany’s federal minister of finance
We’ll be tracking all the main events throughout the day ... |
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