笔译二级综合能力（阅读理解）模拟试卷13
阅读理解（含5小题）
Industrialisation, up close, is organised monotony. For eight hours a day workers at a cashew factory in northern Mozambique scoop nuts from their oily shells. It is hard to talk above the thrum of machines. The pay is a modest 4,600 meticais ($76) a month. But it is a job. There are precious few good ones in Mozambique.
African countries are trying to climb the industrial ladder, and the processing of agricultural commodities seems a natural first step. By roasting coffee and spinning cotton they hope to boost export earnings and create jobs. For example, a fifth of the retail price of cashews goes to primary processors. By reviving its industry, Mozambique has captured some of that value. But its story also shows why industrial policy is hard to get right.
In the 1960s Mozambique produced half the world\’s raw cashew nuts and processed much of the crop domestically. Then the industry was brought to its knees by a long civil war. The knockout punch came in the 1990s, when the World Bank told the government to remove controls and cut taxes on the export of raw nuts. Trading firms shipped out cashews and processed them elsewhere. Domestic processors shut down and 8,000 jobs were lost. Mozambique\’s cashew industry became a cause celebre for anti-globalisation activists.
Then the government changed tack. Since 2001 it has levied an export tax of 18％-22％ for raw nuts, and zero for processed kernels. It also bans exports entirely during the first months of the harvest. In practice, rates of beans. Industry insiders say this informal trade helps launder money for politically connected cartels, which ship heroin the other way. Even so, the export tax has revived the processing industry. With less competition from foreign buyers, processors can squeeze farmers to sell them nuts more cheaply. There are now 16 factories employing 17,000 people, which process about half the cashews sold.
Without the export tax the domestic processing industry would not survive, says one factory owner. After each season he buys enough nuts to last for the full year ahead, paid for with costly bank loans. His competitors in India and Vietnam import nuts from all over the world, so need inventories of only 4-6 weeks.
Of course, the export tax hurts nutgrowers by pushing down the price of their crop. Most cashews in Mozambique are grown by smallholders. Farmers have little incentive to replace old trees or use anti-fungal sprays, despite subsidies, and the quality of raw nuts is one of the lowest in the world. Harvests have increased more slowly than in other African countries.
This is a classic dilemma for agro-processing: governments that want to protect a nascent industry end up hurting much larger numbers of farmers. Past World Bank reforms came down on the side of the nut-growers. And yet the trade-off is rarely as simple as theory predicts, because farmers connected to markets by rutted roads are often at the mercy of a small number of middlemen.
The government is holding consultations about changes to the export tax. Ilidio Bande, the head of the state-run cashew institute, harrumphs that the tax is \\
1.The word \\(D)
A. monopoly
B. discipline
C. disparity
D. vapidity
解析：本题是词汇细节题。第1段写到工人在流水线上加工坚果，难以交流，工资还很低廉。由此可以推
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