05/03/2026

BIZ & FINANCE THURSDAY | MAR 5, 2026

17 UK govt cuts 2026 growth forecast

update came as the Labour government struggles to boost sluggish economic growth, now threatened further by the widening Middle East conflict pushing up energy prices. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said the government’s economic plan was “even more important in a world

“The memory shortage is something that’s clearly affecting supply chains right now, and will have an impact on phones and laptop computers,” Hoecker said. Prices for the vital memory chips surged 40% in the final quarter of 2025 and are expected to climb further this year. Some major smartphone manufacturers like Samsung are already passing through the shock to end consumers. Jeronimo predicted the impact would lead to “the biggest drop ever in smartphone sales in 2026”. – AFP offenders permanent suspension from the Creator Revenue Sharing programme, which pays eligible users a share of advertising revenue generated by their posts. Violations will be flagged through Community Notes – the platform’s crowd-sourced fact checking system – as well as through metadata and other technical signals embedded in AI-generated content. – AFP face The UK economy grew 1.3% last year. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s spending watchdog, upgraded the country’s growth forecast for 2027 and 2028 to 1.6%. The figures were finalised before the US and Israeli launched attacks on Iran on Saturday and Tehran’s retaliation across the Middle East, meaning they could soon become outdated. “Conflict in the Middle East, which escalated as we were finalising this document, could have very significant impacts on the global and UK economies,” the OBR said in its March report. Disruption to crucial oil and gas supplies in the region has fuelled fears of a fresh energy crisis that could ramp up inflation. The Bank of England last month forecast inflation to cool towards its two-percent target in April, as easing energy bills help to offset rising water bills and other elevated costs. The BoE left its benchmark interest rate at 3.75% in February but signalled that further cuts were ahead. Analysts have since scaled back expectations for interest rate cuts in 2026 as European energy prices sky-rocketed and oil prices surged this week. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party has struggled to revive Britain’s sluggish economy since winning a general election in July 2024, having raised taxes in its two annual budgets. The government said on Tuesday that unemployment, already at a five-year high of 5.2%, is expected to peak later this year before gradually declining through 2030. – AFP

that in the last few days has become yet more uncertain with unfolding conflict in Iran and the Middle East”. Britain’s economic growth is expected to slow to 1.1% in 2026, down from the previous estimate of 1.4% made in November when Labour presented its annual budget.

o Finance minister delivers fiscal update overshadowed by war concerns

LONDON: The UK government cut its 2026 growth forecast on Tuesday, as Britain’s finance minister delivered a fiscal update

overshadowed by concerns over the economic fallout from the Iran war. The Spring Statement spending

Reeves delivering her Spring Budget Statement in the House of Commons. – AFPPIC/HOUSE OF COMMONS

Mideast conflict is new ‘red flag’ for roiled tech market BARCELONA: The war between the US, Israel and Iran will raise “red flags” for tech firms that have invested in Middle East from key players” in siting tech infrastructure there, said Francisco Jeronimo, a specialist covering the Middle Eastern and European markets for data firm IDC. Thanks to tax-free zones, Dubai “has been a very important hub for the region, but also for Western Europe” in terms of logistics, Jeronimo pointed out.

US can withstand oil outages thanks to shale boom: ExxonMobil NEW YORK: Thanks to the US shale boom, the United States is “well positioned” to navigate energy market disruptions due to the Middle East war, a top ExxonMobil executive said on Tuesday. Jack Williams, senior vice-president at the oil giant, described the situation as “very dynamic” after significant outages, while noting that crude and liquefied natural gas markets were “very well supplied” heading into the conflict. “Clearly this is a big disruption and ... it comes down to how long the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed to anchor traffic,” Williams said during a Wall Street conference. “(However) we are obviously very, very well positioned because of this shale revolution that took place over the last decade,” he said. Williams said the United States had “good physical access to what we need here”, even though prices are set on the global market. He also noted that ExxonMobil has staff in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries. “A priority concern for us is our people in the region,” he said. – AFP

infrastructure, especially data centres needed to power AI, analysts have warned. The conflict marked the opening of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) telecoms trade fair on Monday morning in Barcelona, with would-be attendees blocked from travel and experts anticipating the fallout. Until this weekend, the Middle East “was investing heavily and making sure they drove the interest platform X announced on Tuesday it would suspend creators from its revenue sharing programme for 90 days if they post AI-generated videos of armed conflicts without disclosing they were artificially made, the company said. The policy change, announced by an executive of the Elon Musk-owned platform, targets what the company described as a threat to information authenticity amid the

“Any time there’s a disruption to global trade, the value chain is necessarily affected,” said Anne Hoecker, an analyst for Bain & Company. The potential knock-on effects are expected to pile on top of a tech market already upset by soaring prices for memory (RAM) chips, pumped up by giant AI developers’ investments in computing power. The new AI disclosure policy represents a notable pivot for a platform whose approach to content moderation has been heavily criticised since Musk completed his US$44 billion acquisition of Twitter – subsequently rebranded as X – in October 2022. Since Musk’s takeover, X has largely sought to remove its policies against misinformation deeming them censorship. Under the new rules, repeat

Now the war “will raise red flags for many vendors, because (the situation) becomes very unstable”, he added. In case of extended fighting, big players may “reconsider whether they will continue to invest”, Jeronimo said. Even now, the conflict is set to heavily impact distribution of smartphones and other gadgets across much of the world. ongoing war pitting the US and Israel against Iran. “During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground,” X’s head of product Nikita Bier said, adding that current AI technologies make it “trivial to create content that can mislead people”. X said on Monday it would “continue to refine” its policies and product to ensure the platform“can be trusted during these critical moments.”

X suspends revenue sharing for undisclosed AI war videos WASHINGTON: Social media