Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuel Saragossa.

In this edition, prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.

So said the Nobel Prize winner for physics, Neil's Bohr.

But that isn't going to stop us from trying.

We ended 2018 with volatile financial markets and signs of a troubled global economy. So if last year was a bit

of a wild ride, should we hold on even tighter for 2019? We brought together three leading thinkers

from the world of finance, economics and politics to discuss what could be in store.

Ngozio-Konjiwela served twice as Nigeria's finance minister

and is a former managing director of the World Bank.

Jeffrey Sachs is economics professor at Columbia University,

where he's also the director for the Centre for Sustainable Development.

Anne Mohamed El-Earion is Chief Economic advisor at the insurance giant Allianz,

and a former CEO of Pimco, the world's largest investor in bonds, which Alliance now owns.

Mohamed Elerian first.

I do not expect a global recession because the US can avoid one as long as it doesn't make a major policy mistake. I do think, however, that

parts of Europe will feel like there are again in recession and China will struggle to soft land

its economy. So no global recession, but there will be spots of significant economic hurt.

Jeffrey Sachs, what do you make of that?

I think it's important for us to speak not only about the short-run business cycle,

which is inevitably on people's minds, but on the fact that major challenges that continue to worsen environmental

crises, water crises, climate change crises, migration forced by people facing violence or extreme

poverty will not be addressed in 2019. It's very important that we not focus only on the ups and downs of the next

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