VOA慢速英语20060911a

DEVELOPMENT REPORT - Africa Praised for Its Progress in Business ReformsBy Mario Ritter

Broadcast: Monday, September 11, 2006

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.




The World Bank has just rated countries on how friendly they are to business. And the biggest news was the progress in Africa. Two African countries, Ghana and Tanzania, are listed this year among the top ten in business reforms.

For the last two years, the World Bank found that Africa had the least progress in reforms in studies of ten business-related areas. The international lender says African countries still have the most complex business rules. But it finds that Africa is making progress at a rate faster than Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

The report is from the World Bank and the International Finance¹ Corporation, the private financing² agency of the World Bank Group. This is the fourth year of reports called Doing Business. The new one is called Doing Business Two Thousand Seven: How to Reform.

It says the top five reformers, in order, are Georgia, Romania, Mexico, China and Peru. France is next, followed by Croatia, Guatemala, Ghana and Tanzania.

Efforts to reduce the time, cost and trouble of legal and administrative³ requirements can mean greater economic activity. Business reforms are important especially to developing economies.

For example, until recently, it took more than one year to receive property ownership documents in Ivory⁴ Coast. Now the process takes about one month. The government no longer requires a single minister to deal with all requests to register property.

In China, the government has established a system of credit records, to help people get personal loans. Now, three hundred forty million Chinese have credit histories.

Mexico was praised for increasing protections for investors⁵. And, in El Salvador, business reforms cut the time needed to start a business from more than one hundred days to just twenty-six days.

Some nations, however, increased barriers to doing business. The World Bank says these include Bolivia, Eritrea, Hungary, East Timor, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. It says these nations made it more difficult to do things like get credit, register property or move goods across borders.

The report rates one hundred seventy-five economies on the ease of doing business. The top five, in order, are Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Hong Kong.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Mario Ritter. A link to the Doing Business Web page can be found at www.unsv.com. I'm Steve Ember.

1 finance   

n.财务管理，财政，金融，财源，资金

参考例句：

• She is an expert in finance.她是一名财政专家。
• A finance house made a bid to buy up the entire company.一家信贷公司出价买下了整个公司。

2 financing   

n.筹措资金

参考例句：

• The main source of our outside financing is bank loan. 我们向外筹措资金的主要渠道是银行贷款。
• They live in a symbiosis with governments that they are financing. 他们与他们服务的政府互利共存。

3 administrative   

adj.行政的，管理的

参考例句：

• The administrative burden must be lifted from local government.必须解除地方政府的行政负担。
• He regarded all these administrative details as beneath his notice.他认为行政管理上的这些琐事都不值一顾。

4 ivory   

n.象牙，乳白色；adj.象牙制的，乳白色的

参考例句：

• My grandmother has some jewelry made of ivory.我祖母有一些象牙首饰。
• It is carved from ivory.它是用象牙雕成的。

5 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会