Welcome to countdown. I am anna edwards. Bloomberg reporters are standing by across the world ready to deliver the stories that will drive your day. Athensweed is in looking at more prospects for greece. Are we seeing signs of weakness in china . We have the latest manufacturing data from hong kong. Twitter wraps up its efforts in social tv and airline hide has the details on its new acquisition. Caroline hyde has the details on its new acquisition. Interviews coming on bloomberg. We will speak with the ceo of Heathrow Airport. He will look at heathrows place in the u. K. Economy. That is during the next hour of the program. Then on the pulse, there will be a an exclusive interview with formerminister Prime Minister agrees. Finance ministers in athens are likely to sign off on the next package of aid to greece so the country can avoid default. David tweed caught up with the finance minister yannis stournas this week. Will greece need more money after the charge that is being discussed today . This is a subject which has been discussed in great detail. Greece has still got problems. The economy contracted last year by 3. 7 . This year, economists are mixed in the outlook whether it will be a further contraction or whether the economy might actually return to growth. There has been some good news. One is the fact that greek is left with a budget surplus. It is one of the reason the finance ministers are looking at greece and thinking, we are going to be able to let that next payment of eight to go out. That will be just payment of aid go out. That will be decided today. Muche fiscal situation is better than expected. , along the program money with the better performance on the fiscal side, are enough to cover us fully for the next month. Under certain conditions, that could continue inside 2016 under certain conditions. Everything is conditional. The conditions that he put out there is the banks would need to raise capital and can raise that capital from private funds and not have to resort to the bailout funds which have been reserved for the banks. The of the condition is the banks pass the European Central banks stress test later this year and do not have to raise more money than is already on the books. Finally, Economic Growth must return. I went back to him and said, at this stage do you think there will be a need for a third bailout for greece . Seet the moment, we do not the need for a third bailout. Lets stick to our guns. I think the economy will continue to perform well. This is going to be the catalyst. He looks pretty optimistic at the moment. There are a lot of tests that they need to do. One of the key tests is a bond market. Will the government be able to tap the bond market . The minister says they hope to do that in the first half of this year. Lots on your to do list for today. Tell us what is lined up. We have got a busy day. In about half an hour i will be sexiest to someone from bank. Axias bank. At the end of the day, we will be talking to the former greek Prime Minister. Of theing for signs greek recovery from the ground up. The buying power of japanese consumers will take a hit as the 5 to 8 . Rises from the tax hike puts their policy to the test. Is the economy ready for todays sales tax increase . What are you expecting . No, not really. If you look at the most recent report, which is a survey of Business Confidence, there is not a great deal of confidence at the moment. The economy is performing relatively well from a gdp standpoint, but the big issue is will Companies Pay employees more and so they can spend more money and boost the economy . That is the problem. Wages are not being raised. The tax increase could hurt Consumer Spending going forward. How does japan boost the economy when it is raising taxes on the very part of the economy, the consumer, that is hoping to boost growth . It is a bit of a paradox. What is most important is for the government to come forth and do a lot of the reforms as it has promised to do. It needs to liberalize the labor market, it needs to make the economy more entrepreneur. It needs to lower Corporate Taxes and until we see those types of reforms, we are not going to see consumers excited about going out to the stores and buying more, especially at a time when taxes are rising, they are not making more money, and japan is getting a little bit of inflation at this point. The economy is at a Pivotal Moment and it is up to the government and the Prime Minister to come forth with a lot of the reforms that he is promised. 15 months in, we have not seen anything very tangible from him other than changing personnel at the bank of japan. We have seen a lot of liquidity coming in from the bank of japan. What is him orton is the window of opportunity to push the reforms through his closing. If the Prime Minister steps up and does a couple of things that impress consumers and companies, we could be in for a rough year. What should they be doing to repeat of 2009 . You have seen this impressive tsunami of capital from the bank of japan. That helped asset markets. The Prime Minister has come forth with a program for deregulating the economy. It is a Marketing Campaign without a product. We are waiting for the Prime Minister to come forth and do some of these reforms. There is a lot more proactive talk and planning to boost the economy and avoid the lessons and ghosts of 1997. The problem is followthrough. We have not seen a great deal and would need to see some immediately. Thank you very much. Chinese manufacturing indexes are pointing to weakness in the worlds secondbiggest economy. We are joined from hong kong to recap the numbers. Ava, we are looking at the health of the Manufacturing Sector today. Id, we are looking at the health of the Manufacturing Sector today. We have two readings on manufacturing. They look at different parts of the Manufacturing Sector. We have the official numbers for the bunch of the month of march. Coming in at 50. 3. A little bit better than estimates. Better the and compared to february numbers. There was a little bit of a positive surprise. The look of the ozzie dollar, there was a bit of a spike. Oneou look at the hsbc which looks at smaller firms, that dropped to 48 and is the Third Straight month and has shown a contraction. It shows you where the pain is being felt the most. Policy implications are concerned, hsbcs chief china Economist Says they expect beijing to tweak policy sooner rather than later. The pace of growth in the First Quarter may have come in below what beijing was comfortable with. Target was 7. 5 . It comes off as promising because the premier said if that china needs to do it, they do have a lot of these policies in reserve to support growth ahead. At this point, two separate reads. Not the best. Back to you. David joining us from hong kong. Twitter is wrapping up its social tea efforts in europe, brian a French Company as well as the u. K. s second sink. Will do forat these twitter bird twitter. Are at homele watching television, they are not just watching tv but also on their tablet or computer tweaking away. This is what many want to leverage. Twitter was to realize and show tv broadcasters and advertisers how much they can get in terms of aim for their buck, bang for their euro, bank for their pound. It is something they push forward in the United States. It teamed up with nielsens and they have something called the twitter tv Rating System. It allows tv companies to see where the engagement is and what sort of extra theyre gaining from the conversations that are happening on twitter. Een approvedved b by nielsen that when twitter ombre sessions are going on about your program, more people tune in. That is why they are making these riches is in france in the u. K. Theyre also going with an analysis company. They want to bring that twitter tv Rating System and extended into africa, asia, and southern your. It certainly seems to be the classic environment. People take to twitter to give you a running commentary. Doesnt it make you mad . People join together to watch. How will this work in the terms of the International Users . This never fails to amaze me. Users of twitter comes from united from outside the United States. Of revenue comes from outside the United States. They have they want people to realize the power of twitter outside the United States and paying for. In companies that can provide them the analysis and discourse thesethey can have with types of companies. If they can educate the broadcasters and advertisers as to how much more they can engage with their viewers via twitter, it will lori and more advertisers. Lure in more advertising. The company they got in the u. K. Already has a partnership with facebook. We will see where that goes. Twitter has some coffers after its ipo. We could see more ambition. Thank you very much. Just ahead, as japan sales tax hits consumers, our next guest will tell us when we might expect more easing from the tank bank of japan. Type per days company news. Overseas corporate he ocbcse banking corporationocb bought wing hang bank. It would give them more access to chinarelated business in a city that is the Biggest Center offshore trading. It gives them a network of about 70 branches. General motors announced a new recall of 1. 5 million vehicles for faulty power steering. This brings the total number of 6. 6 recall this year to million. The chief executive officer is set to testify before Congress Today about a previous recall. That hearing will focus on why it took more than a decade to people million vehicles that had a faulty ignition switch. Telecom italia sold its headquarters. Sixcarrier were made in the Story Building as a tenant. Will remain in the six Story Building as a tenant. Welcome back to countdown. Japan is raising its sales tax from 5 to 8 . Can the country handle it . Thank you for coming in. Our commentator in tokyo does not think that the economy can handle this increase in sales tax. You think the academy can handle it economy can handle it . We are in for a tough quarter. It will be a deep contraction. Going beyond that, you have to look at policy determination. It is what it has not been in a long time. There are some positive as it is to suggest that we are going to get some degree of nominal wages like we have not seen for many years. We are running up into the shinto spring wage talks. You think theyll be crucial. Maybelooks like something under 1 in terms of base wage increase agreements that have been put into place. Then you will see if you see some employment growth, there are bonus increases on top of that, we could be in the region of 1. 5 in terms of wage increases agreed. On top of that, even though you have these agreements you have to look at the fundamentals of the labor market. We have the Unemployment Rate at 3. 6 . Historically, those levels on those two gauges have triggered nominal wage increases. I think it points to a tightening of the labor market that bodes well for nominal wages. How close as japan to something that looks like a selfsustaining the economy . Are we going to see more qe before we see less . Yes. Having said all of that, you were talking about guessing that Consumer Expectations that inflation to change after 15 years of mild deflation. I think that needs more work. We are in a situation were you have had the benefits of the yen depreciation through imported inflation print but if you look at the imported good side, we are starting to see disinflation. The annual change in dollaryen is falling back towards zero. That disinflation environment is going to take hold. It is perhaps likely that the bo j will have to step up again. There inflation target is 2 . It is more like 1 where we will stabilize. Have been disappointed in the third arrow and a lack of structural reform in the economy. Are you disappointed . You stand in the disappointed cap . I think expectations were unrealistic. After what happened last year, it was likely that boj policy was going to have an instant impact on the financial market. The process of the third a rrow is ongoing and will take many years. I think that gradual reform is going to take some time. Perhaps we are in a situation where expectations have now become very low. That means the hurdle for the markets being surprised as we go forward towards the next of these the rest of this year is also low and i think he could trigger another bout of optimism. Stay with us. Tour after a global a short break. Will do you up to speed with all the breaking news. Welcome back to countdown. I am anna edwards. Lets talk briefly about china. Hsbcd the official and the today. The hsbc was weaker but the official figure with a touch higher. All in all, we can conclude that we are seeing some degree of stability coming back to the economic days. Appetite,general risk that is the optimism. I am sure that could feed into encouraging further risk in trade and support for equities. Lets talk about janet yellen, the chair of the federal reserve, speaking yesterday. The market had taken her comments as hawkish, putting the six month mark between the end of tapering and the start of an increase in rate rises in the u. S. , whether intentionally or not. Is she talking more devilishly now dovishly now . She was talking where her concerns lie, which is the labor market. She was reiterating there is slack and policy will have to remain supportive for some time. She probably does not want to go down that road again. The markets perceptions were dovish. We should not get away from the simple fact that it is that bad economic data. If we get a good market on friday, it is back what she said in march. Cpi coming up. 5 year on year yesterday. A negative surprise for some markets, a week number. How worried is the ecb going to . E worrie they give the impression that price risks are evenly balanced . The problem is the strategy has not been agreed. Some say it is about cyclical things like energy and food, that they cannot control. If you look at a chart for german inflation, it has been trending lower for a year and a half. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will take a short break. Welcome back to countdown. Lets get to manus cranny. Lets kick it off of the dollar. You can see postyellens comments yesterday, saying we need stimulus for some time. There is considerable slack in the economy. It defied me. It was dropping for two days in a row but we will keep an eye on the bigger trend in the dollar. It will be critically important to the next leg in terms of where the dollar goes. Aussie dollar. He we did just break. 9300. This is after the Central Bank Left rates unchanged and the governor said racing games recent gains made it greater you very much chinas Manufacturing Sector is showing in 60 increasing signs of weakness. Hes index fell to 48. 3 the lowest since march. A different reading showed manufacturing improving from the month before. Australia pot Central Bank Left its benchmark rate unchanged after record lows. Its widely expected move was meant to offset the loss of investment in australias mining industry. Frances new Prime Minister has been announced. His party suffered heavy losses in local elections. U. S. Secretary of state john kerry is in the middle east for urgent talks on the peace process. He made a surprise visit to jerusalem to meet with israeli Prime Minister benjamin netanyahu. Then meet with the palestinian president. He has been working frantically to resolve an impasse centered on a promised israeli prisoner release. Heathrow is only months away from opening its terminal two, its revamped terminal two. We have been looking at it and the future of heathrow and we will be bringing you a conversation with the ceo of Heathrow Airport a little bit later. Will be talking to Matthews Colin matthews. David tweed is live in athens for us. He has been speaking to the financial minister whether greece is on track for a financial recovery. Greases and a good vision greece is in a good position to feel confidence enough. Youre going to have the best possible result. You saying that, maybe outside investors say that, at about the unemployed guy on the street who is relying on his grandmothers pension, which has been slashed, to get by. How do you stop that silent crisis from turning into a crisis for the economy and seeing people leaving the country because they cannot find work . You raise an important issue. Indices moment that started to improve to the moment people feel it in their pockets, there is a time lag. The argument has to be presented clearly to the people. Where the argument has to be resented clearly to the people. We should be clear with people. Greece has done so much so that the country can be saved. More than 88 of the necessary fiscal adjustment has already been achieved. We can tell people that we can attend the future with much more optimism compared to the Previous Year in greece. Maybe you can convince me. What i come into greece, i see that there is an improvement that has come about because you have a slowing economy, imports have collapsed. You dont have exports, it seems to be the part that is missing. Your tourism you have tourism haveports of goods increased in volume by more than 2 . Export of services, tourism in partular, by more than 15 . Exports of goods as, what ever exports of goods and services, whatever weight you look at it, 4 .