Chapter 1: What are the current economic frustrations faced by shopkeepers in Iran?
Iran's store owners take to the streets in anger. Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Gideon Long. Good morning. We're starting the programme in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
That's the sound of shopkeepers demonstrating for a second successive day, shouting Bisharaf, which means dishonourable in Persian, a slogan they were directing at the government. Annual inflation is running at over 40% and business owners are angry at the rapid devaluation of the currency, the rial, in part due to the pressure of Western sanctions.
Arash Azizi is an Iranian journalist based in the US. It has lost half of its value in the last year, but even if you go a little more, it's third of what it was just like 18 months ago. So people lose their savings, they're really affected because much of the things you have to buy are linked to the international market in one way or the other.
Chapter 2: How has inflation and currency devaluation impacted Iranian businesses?
And many people deal with foreign currency more directly, their job is linked to it in one way or the other, or they have to buy commodities in the global market. So the fact that Iran is doing really bad and the economy is in a terrible condition and people's you know, have really become widespread is somewhat a point of consensus now. So how has the government responded?
The central bank governor of Iran is going to change now. There's hope that that would do something to the currency market. The dissent in Iran is very deep-seated. Iranians for so long have not been able to imagine a better future. In the last year, they've had a terrible situation in water, in electricity. There's been serious cuts. There's been fallout in the standard of living. So it's been...
tremendously bad time for the regime and it's not surprising that it has lost even its core constituencies like the traders and like merchants. Journalists are rash as easy. Let's do the numbers. The government in India has approved $9.5 billion worth of defence spending. It says the money will be focused on domestic companies rather than big foreign defence firms.
And Spain's just released its latest inflation data. Prices rose by 3% this month, slightly lower than in November, but still well above the Eurozone average. And Japan's Nikkei stock market index edged lower on the final trading day of 2025, but it still ended up 26% for the year. South Korea has announced a crackdown on companies that engage in unfair market practices.
The move is designed to help small businesses, as the BBC's Jake Kwan reports from Seoul. South Korea's small businesses had long grappled with large companies exerting undue influence. Although the law prescribed imprisonment for such crimes, actual jail time has been rare. The new scheme seeks to impose heavy fines as a real threat.
The penalty for price fixing will be raised from 20% of revenue to 30%. It also increases fines on companies that fail to protect customer data from incidents of hacking. The new South Korean president Lee Jae-myung has said the fines must make the companies believe that breaking the law will ruin them. Jake Kwan there.
Now, in one of the UK's most famous brands, the automaker Jaguar Land Rover was targeted by hackers in late August. It was forced to shut down its computer networks, leaving it unable to build or sell any cars. The BBC's Theo Leggett takes a look at what that's meant for the sector.
Jaguar Land Rover normally makes more than 1,000 cars a day at its factories around the world, but production was crippled for more than five weeks. And while the impact on JLR itself was severe, a swathe of other businesses, the carmaker's suppliers, were also hit, as David Leggett of Global Data Automotive explains.
If you think of a typical vehicle, it could have up to 20,000 component parts with thousands of suppliers around the world. When manufacturing operations stop at the top, then the whole supply chain underneath that seizes up because there is nowhere for the component parts and output to go, and the factories therefore grind to a halt. Among JLR's main suppliers is Evtech Group.
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Chapter 3: What government responses have been proposed to address economic dissent in Iran?
JLR is now back up to full production, and it seems fears that many of its smaller suppliers might not survive have not been realised. Nevertheless, the affair has shown clearly how vulnerable our economies can be, with an attack on one key company causing havoc for thousands more. In London, I'm the BBC's Theo Leggett for Marketplace.
And finally, Denmark's National Postal Service will today deliver letters for the last time, and its red post boxes will be removed from the country's streets. PostNord has been offering the service since 1624, but during this century the number of letters being sent has plummeted by 90%. In the UK, I'm Gideon Long with the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.
Thanks for listening.