今天出國(guó)留學(xué)網(wǎng)GRE欄目的小編給大家?guī)?lái)“GRE趣味閱讀：剛果銀行業(yè)用木船運(yùn)鈔”，以下是詳細(xì)內(nèi)容，希望對(duì)同學(xué)們有所幫助!
Banking in Congo——Cash in a canoe
剛果的銀行業(yè)：木船運(yùn)鈔
A new system for paying civil servants puts banks through their paces
公務(wù)員工資支付方式翻新，銀行加快發(fā)展腳步
IMAGINE if, to collect your salary each month, you had to walk to the nearest town, perhaps tens of miles away, to conGREgate in a school or a football pitch or a church. There, you and your colleagues wait for a man to arrive from the capital, perhaps a thousand miles away, with a suitcase of cash. Most of the time, you do not receive as much money as you should. Sometimes the man does not arrive at all.
可以想象一下，每月為了工資，你必須走到最近的鎮(zhèn)子，可能會(huì)十幾英里遠(yuǎn)，然后和同事在某個(gè)學(xué)校或某個(gè)足球場(chǎng)或是某個(gè)教堂里等，等一個(gè)從千里之外的首都來(lái)的人，帶著一個(gè)現(xiàn)金箱。多數(shù)時(shí)候，你不會(huì)拿到應(yīng)得的錢。有時(shí)，這個(gè)人也根本不會(huì)來(lái)。
Until recently, that is how most government employees in the Democratic Republic of Congo were paid. But over the past three years the government has been urging civil servants to open bank accounts, to which their pay can be transferred directly. In the process, it is accelerating the spread of banking in an economy that, according to Michel Losembe, the bow-tied president of the Congolese Banking Association, is “not very far off barter”.
最近，在剛果民主共和國(guó)，多數(shù)政府職員才用上述方式拿工資。但是過(guò)去三年里，政府一直在催促公務(wù)員，讓他們開(kāi)設(shè)銀行帳戶，工資直接打入帳戶。這個(gè)過(guò)程加速了銀行業(yè)在這樣一個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)中的發(fā)展。這個(gè)經(jīng)濟(jì)體用打著領(lǐng)結(jié)的剛果銀行業(yè)協(xié)會(huì)主席米歇爾·洛桑貝的話說(shuō)就是，“不是先前的易貨經(jīng)濟(jì)”。
Few countries are as corrupt as Congo. A persistent national joke concerns a mythical “Article15” of the constitution, which reads “Débrouillez-vous”—“You’re on your own”. Mobutu Sese Seko, a former strongman, used state funds to charter a Concorde to take him on shopping trips to Paris. By the time of his overthrow in 1997, graft was endemic. Government employees were not paid but rather expected to use their positions to make a living.
沒(méi)有哪個(gè)國(guó)家像剛果這樣腐敗。長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)，全國(guó)流傳著一個(gè)笑話，是關(guān)于憲法神秘的“第十五條”，規(guī)定“Débrouillez-vous”――“你得靠自己”。 蒙博托·塞塞·塞科曾經(jīng)是位強(qiáng)人。他曾用國(guó)家資金，坐著協(xié)和號(hào)包機(jī)，飛到巴黎購(gòu)物。1997年下臺(tái)時(shí)，腐敗已屢見(jiàn)不鮮。政府職員拿不到工資，而是期望利用手中的權(quán)利謀生。
Civil war engulfed Congo in the 1990s and 2000s. As it wound down, government was rebuilt and money again began to flow out of Kinshasa, the capital, to roughly 1m functionaries in the rest of the country. But corruption did not disappear. Among the most prized government jobs was that of accountant: the people responsible for transporting bags of cash to the provinces to hand out to employees.
1990年代至2000年代，內(nèi)戰(zhàn)淹沒(méi)了剛果，政府千瘡百孔。重建后，首都金沙薩再次散金，把錢發(fā)給近100萬(wàn)名的公務(wù)員?？墒?，腐敗并未消失。政府最值錢的職位是會(huì)計(jì)，因?yàn)檫@些人負(fù)責(zé)把現(xiàn)鈔袋傳給各省，再發(fā)給職員。
In 2012, however, the Congolese government started helping civil servants to open bank accounts. Around three-quarters of them—some 670,000 people—now have one. In the process, the government has weeded out tens of thousands of ghost employees, since the embezzlers who invented them could not open accounts in their names without a matching ID.
然而，2012年，剛果政府幫助公務(wù)員開(kāi)通銀行帳戶?，F(xiàn)在，約四分之三的人(總共約67萬(wàn))都有了銀行帳戶。在這個(gè)過(guò)程中，政府清除了成千上萬(wàn)的內(nèi)鬼，因?yàn)楸I用公款的人，名不符實(shí)，無(wú)法開(kāi)通帳戶。
Yet in a vast country with fewer roads than Luxembourg, hardly anyone lives anywhere near a bank branch. So Congolese banks must now do the work the government accountants used to: shipping money to the back of beyond. Cash has to be transported to branches in regional capitals, and thence to account-holders on the backs of motorbikes, in canoes or by foot, explains Oliver Meisenberg, the German boss of Trust Merchant Bank, one of Congo’s biggest.
剛果雖然地域廣大，但公路比盧森堡少。在這樣一個(gè)國(guó)家，很少有人住在銀行旁邊。因此，剛果銀行現(xiàn)在的工作就是曾經(jīng)國(guó)家會(huì)計(jì)的工作：把錢運(yùn)到僻遠(yuǎn)地區(qū)。剛果最大的銀行信托商業(yè)銀行的德國(guó)理事奧利弗·梅森伯格解釋說(shuō)，資金先轉(zhuǎn)到省會(huì)城市，再由摩托車、獨(dú)木舟或是徒步押運(yùn)。
Bank staff with suitcases of cash makes easy targets, just as they did in the west of America in the 19th century. Though they usually travel with army escorts, there have been at least ten armed robberies of bank employees since January, says Mr Losembe. One particularly brutal raid in September in South Kivu, in the wild east of the country, killed 13 people.
銀行職員既要保護(hù)現(xiàn)金箱，還要力抗匪徒，跟19世紀(jì)美國(guó)西部一樣。雖然通常是武裝押運(yùn)，但1月以來(lái)，武裝搶劫至少十起，洛贊伯先生說(shuō)。9月，剛果西部荒涼的南基伍省搶劫特別慘烈，死亡13人。
Congolese bankers hope that the new system will spur the growth of a proper banking sector. At the moment banks are little more than money-transfer companies, and not very sophisticated ones at that. The transfers tend to go only one way—out of Kinshasa—so cannot be netted against each other; instead cash almost always has to be moved physically. Depositors mistrust both banks and the Congolese franc. To attract dollar deposits, banks must pay at least 6% annual interest; rates for borrowers are generally as high as 25%. There is hardly any corporate lending beyond short-term overdraft facilities.
剛果銀行家希望，新的支付系統(tǒng)會(huì)刺激銀行業(yè)的適當(dāng)發(fā)展。目前的業(yè)務(wù)只是轉(zhuǎn)帳，功能還不完善。轉(zhuǎn)帳只從金沙薩單向轉(zhuǎn)出，因此不能相互贏利;而且現(xiàn)金必須靠人力運(yùn)送。存款人不信任銀行和剛果法郎。為了吸收美元存款，銀行年利率至少只能是6%;貸款利率通常會(huì)高達(dá)25%。除了短期透支貸款，幾乎沒(méi)有企業(yè)貸款。
A decade ago there were just 50,000 bank accounts in the whole country, which has a population somewhere between 60m and 80m. Now there are 3m. As more employees get accounts, selling them loans and insurance, and moving them from cash to mobile transactions, becomes more realistic. In the meantime, actually receiving their salaries at all marks a big step forward for civil servants.
十年前，全國(guó)僅5萬(wàn)個(gè)銀行帳戶，而全國(guó)人口為6000萬(wàn)至8000萬(wàn)之間，現(xiàn)在銀行帳戶300萬(wàn)個(gè)。越來(lái)越多的職員開(kāi)通了銀行帳戶，給他們放貸，出售保險(xiǎn)，以及現(xiàn)金交易轉(zhuǎn)向移動(dòng)交易，都變得更加現(xiàn)實(shí)。同時(shí)，公務(wù)員確實(shí)得到工資，這才是大進(jìn)步。
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