Business

Walk into a bakery or a bookshop in Bavaria's Chiemgau region, and you might spot a customer paying with what looks like play money — colorful banknotes printed with grasshoppers, ladybugs and other insects.  "An estimated 10 to 15% of customers pay this way," one bookseller told DW. The locals call it the "Chiemgauer" — and it's a currency they invented themselves.  Quirky as it sounds, it underpins a micro financial system that has been running for more than two decades — and has recently evolved into a tool for cutting carbon emissions in this picturesque corner of southeastern Germany. A classroom experiment that got out of hand The Chiemgauer was born in 2003 at a local high school, where economics teacher Christian Gelleri and a group of students were looking for a way to suppor...

While Germany is trying to make major budget cuts, billions of euros are silently sitting in banks and other financial institutions, unused and unnoticed in so-called forgotten accounts. A 2021 report from the country's Research Ministry estimated that up to €4.2 billion ($4.9 billion) was in such accounts. Other estimates are much higher, some as high as €9 billion. The banks themselves haven't released any figures. As people get older, have multiple accounts or die, relatives and heirs have a hard time identifying accounts. Online banking, with no paperwork or printed statements, makes it more difficult because the information is locked up in email accounts or on hard drives. Non-traditional financial assets like cryptocurrencies or NFTs are even harder to keep track of.   What is an...

Russia and Saudi Arabia each produce between 9-10 million barrels of oil a day. Together, they account for over 20% of total world oil production. This gives them significant control over supply, despite Western sanctions and price caps on Russian oil following the war in Ukraine , and disruptions caused by the Strait of Hormuz blockade. OPEC minus one important member As the biggest member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Saudi Arabia has long dominated the formal alliance and worked to keep oil prices stable by controlling supply. Before the war in Iran started, OPEC countries — Iran is a member — produced over 35% of the world's crude oil and have nearly 80% of the world's proven oil reserves. Still, over the years, the group's power has waned becaus...

As the Iran war approaches 100 days on Sunday, a comforting but flawed assumption has taken hold.  Many policymakers, businesses and investors believe that a rapid reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will quickly bring down energy prices, once stranded oil and gas tankers can finally leave the Gulf. Yet top oil executives, shipping sector leaders and economists are predicting the opposite. They caution that peace will not instantly return energy markets and global supply chains to normal. The fallout, they say, could last for many more months and even years. Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, the Gulf's largest oil supplier, told investors last month that even if Hormuz reopened immediately, it would "take months for the market to rebalance." If the closure was sustained for even a few mor...

This year's St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which opened on June 3, is the fifth to be held since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Before the war, the forum served as a venue for signing major investment agreements with foreign companies. Back then, the European Union was Russia's key economic partner, and the forum attracted prominent Western politicians, business leaders and senior executives. But after Russia invaded Ukraine, major Western economies scaled back ties and the forum's highest-profile foreign attendees have increasingly come from countries that are no longer among Moscow's key economic partners. This year, the leaders of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Samia Suluhu Hassan, are set to share the stage at a joi...

While Germany is trying to make major budget cuts, billions of euros are silently sitting in banks and other financial institutions, unused and unnoticed in so-called forgotten accounts. A 2021 report from the country's Research Ministry estimated that up to €4.2 billion ($4.9 billion) was in such accounts. Other estimates are much higher, some as high as €9 billion. The banks themselves haven't released any figures. As people get older, have multiple accounts or die, relatives and heirs have a hard time identifying accounts. Online banking, with no paperwork or printed statements, makes it more difficult because the information is locked up in email accounts or on hard drives. Non-traditional financial assets like cryptocurrencies or NFTs are even harder to keep track of.   What is an...

North Korea runs one of the most bizarre economies on the planet. Despite being one of only a handful of nations with nuclear weapons, its 2024 gross domestic product (GDP) was a paltry $26.6 billion (€22.9 billion). This is about 70 times smaller than South Korea's $1.86 trillion economy and about a fifth of the annual revenue of the world's top-traded company, Nvidia. Thanks to a centrally planned economy that prioritizes domestic production, North Korea is nowhere near as reliant on trade as your average free-market economy, partly due to international sanctions, introduced by the United Nations in 2017 over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program. The North's total imports and exports account for just a small fraction of GDP, versus the South, where international trade ma...

Germany's coalition government of Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) is seeking to overturn the central provision of the heating law introduced by the previous administration. The original law stipulated that all heating systems installed in the coming years must run on at least 65% renewable energy. Under the new proposals, however, oil and gas heating systems with significantly lower shares of climate-friendly gases would still be allowed in existing buildings for a longer period. The cabinet approved the plan based on a draft bill submitted by Building Minister Verena Hubertz (SPD) and Economy Minister Katherina Reiche (CDU). Under the planned legislation, new heating systems would only be required to use at least 10% renewable energy. Why heat pumps are all the ra...

Imagine rockets being launched from the Azores, an archipelago out in the Atlantic Ocean, carrying Portuguese-built satellites into space — and then picture reusable space capsules returning to base. While this may sound like a rather futuristic scenario, elements of it could soon become reality. Portugal, after all, is working hard to become a spacefaring nation, with the help of its many highly skilled engineers and EU cooperation. "Portugal has modernized considerably over the past 20 years," Portuguese Space Agency President Ricardo Conde tells DW. "Our universities produce outstanding engineers. We have created human capital that we can build on." Conde, whose agency was founded in 2019, says about 80 different companies now employ some 2,000 highly qualified workers across Portuga...

The Iran war and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a key waterway through which about 20% of the global oil trade passed before the conflict — have triggered an oil supply shock on a scale unseen in decades.   The crunch has sent countries worldwide scrambling for alternatives to fill the lost supply. Many governments, particularly in Asian countries that are heavily dependent on Middle Eastern energy, have also introduced measures to curb fuel demand. The International Energy Agency (IEA) coordinated a massive release of oil reserves in March — about 400 million barrels — from the emergency stockpiles of industrialized countries. The move was aimed at ensuring adequate supply and stabilizing crude prices. Strategic reserves provide buffer from oil shock Before the war,...