Hello and welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm David Harper and coming up on this edition in just a second,
we're going to hear more about Panama's banana production industry,
one of the largest in the world,
and find out how they're coping after strikes have disrupted exports.
We've also been hearing about a significant drop in profits for Timu.
Can the cut price Chinese retailer cut prices even further?
And we're looking back to 1975 when the West African trading block ECOWAS was officially founded.
and we'll find out what it's meant for people and businesses in the block.
With an ID card, the Equus biometric ID card,
you can move all the way from Lagos to Dakar without visa.
We know this is no mean feat.
But first of all,
it's not often that a disruption to the production of bananas results in a state of emergency being declared.
The governments of Panama have done just that, though,
in the region of Bocas del Toro, where output has ground to a halt.
5,000 people working for the US banana producer Chiquita joined a nationwide strike in protest at pension reforms and were then sacked by the company.
A court in Panama has ruled the strike as illegal and it's had a significant effect in one of the top banana exporters in the world.
I've been out of work for four weeks now,
and how am I going to support myself if I'm just at home?