Учебно-методическое пособие для подготовки к экзамену по английскому языку (для студентов экономических специальностей). Бегун Н.В - 27 стр.

Individual Work.                                                                    competition. Good. These are all gaps in the market, which need to be filled
       Visit a McDonald's (or another popular local restaurant). Observe the        fast if Central Europe is to catch up with the West. That's why foreigners
employees. Is there a variety of ages, races, and abilities? Is there an equal      need open access to such markets. Services should be liberalised as fast as
number of males and females? Write a one-paragraph summary of your find-            industrial trade and prices. Or does anyone seriously want to protect com-
ings. Be prepared to read it to the class or to tell the class what you observed.   munist-era service standards?

Article 4.                                                                          Plastic smiles.
                            OPEN SERVICE                                            Poles are catching up with credit cards, but credit cards remain rare.
Why services should be liberalised – fast.                                                  Speak to a Western banker in Central Europe, and given half a
                                                                                    chance he’ll drone on about the explosion in credit-card usage. If that were
       There's little doubt that Central Europe has been damaged by rapid           true, it would have an important effect on the economy, because consumer
liberalisation. And little doubt that it needed to be. It's not just that much of   demand would blossom as people used borrowed money to go on a shop-
industry was obsolete, and the clear-out has been accelerated by open com-          ping spree. In fact, while debit card usage is increasing, the number of real
petition. It's that the region has also been trying to develop a service sector     credit cards remains tiny.
from scratch. And it has only succeeded where foreigners were allowed to                    Take Poland, which has 2,5 million users of Visa and Master Card –
fill some of the gaps.                                                              impressive, given that plastic was virtually unheard of until a few years ago.
       The most obvious example is banking. The few banks in the region not         But analysts reckon that as many as 90% of these are debit cards. Therefore
already sold to foreigners soon will be, and for a good reason: it is impossible    the impact of the card market on the economy remains negligible, because
to create a commercial banking sector in just ten years. Even where govern-         cardholders have no extra money to spend.
ments were reluctant to give up control over banking they ended up with little              Still, card usage is increasing. The indicator market research com-
choice: either, as in the Czech Republic and Hungary, because unskilled local       pany found that nearly 29% of bank-account holders expect to use debit
managers ruined the banks through bad lending. Or, as in Poland, because            cards by the end of the year, compared to less then 15% in 1998. The num-
local banks were just too small and too poor to survive EU competition.             ber of credit-card users, while low, is also surging, with 24% growth pre-
       In either case, the debate should not be about ownership, but about          dicted this year.
the need for a more competitive finance system. The region is littered with                 Meanwhile, Poles are fast catching up with basic banking products.
companies that folded because they couldn't get outside finance, or couldn't        Already, bank usage is a lot higher than the figures suggest. Recent surveys
afford hefty interest payments if they did. And the real damage is not that         show that while just one in five Poles has a current account, many more
being done to the old communist steel mills and engineering companies that          people use bank services. The Foundation for Education and Bank Research
have little future, regardless of cash. It is that being done to new companies      reckons two-thirds of Poles are bank clients in the wider sense – they have
like Korado, a Czech radiator-maker that is selling up because it can't afford      taken out a commercial loan, have a time-deposit account or an ATM card.
expensive bank loans.                                                                       A few of them even have chequeing accounts – which were useless
       This is the real answer to those who still hanker after protectionism.       only a few years ago when a cheque had to be accompanied by a bank letter
Yes, it would certainly save a few companies who can't survive open com-            guaranteeing its validity. Current accounts are now set to surge, as compa-
petition, and yes, local bankers are probably right to complain that they           nies create new accounts for their employees. The days are fading when
weren't given enough time to prepare for EU competition. But that's missing         workers wanted their wages in cash.
the point. Protectionism does not save companies or banks, it simply dis-                   As people become more familiar with banking services, the number
guises their lack of competitiveness.                                               of credit-card users should rise as well. Jan Garlicki, Indicator’s president,
       It's an argument that can be extended to the whole of the service sec-       reckons it may take only three years for Polish credit-card users to catch up
tor, not just banks. The region's hotels and restaurants are being kicked into      with the three to four cards held by people in Western Europe.
shape by foreign investors; its shops are already being wiped out by foreign
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