Questões de Língua Inglesa da Escola de Administração Fazendária (ESAF)

Read the text below in order to answer questions 27 to 30:

THE CONFIDENCE QUESTION

What's absent from today's economic discourse is the concept of consumer and investor confidence in a nation's government and economy. This wasn't always the case. As the Cambridge don John Maynard Keynes put it: "The state of confidence, as they term it, is a matter to which practical men pay the closest and most anxious attention". Another Cambridge economist of his era, Frederick Lavington, identified confidence as a key component of the business cycle. His 1922 book The Trade Cycle described the "tendency for confidence to pass into errors of optimism or pessimism", which triggers booms and busts.

To see how misguided economic theories have laid waste to confidence lately, look at Argentina. Consumers, investors and businessmen are gloomy, fed up with the government's policies. Foreign direct investment has fallen 66% in the last year. The economy is flat, rising just 0.9% in this year's first quarter, compared with the first quarter of 1999. There are even dire warnings of debt default.

Argentina suffers from a lack of confidence. The only way to cure it is with a big bang, as Thatcher did in Britain. Cut taxes and government spending to start.

"Consumers, investors and businessmen are gloomy" means they are

• A. feeling threatened by foreign policies
• B. confident despite the financial obstacles
• C. competitive in the global economy
• D.

  unhappy about the government's plans and principles

• E. optimistic in relation to the monetary policy

Read the text below in order to answer questions 21 to 23:

THE PROPOSED BUDGET FOR 2000

The proposed budget for 2000 is fully consistent with the four-year plan for 2000-03 ("Avança Brasil"), also submitted to Congress at the end of August 1999. This plan identifies the federal expenditure programmes that are to receive priority in the allocation of budgetary resources over the next four years, reflecting the main governmental objectives in the social, infrastructure and other public expenditure areas. It seeks to exploit regional and cross-projects synergies, and to attract partnerships with the other levels of government, the public enterprises, the multilateral development banks, and the private sector, to promote a more regionally balanced and sustainable development of the country. Increased emphasis will be placed on the evaluation of the results of these programmes, and on the accountability of the public managers of the programmes for these results.

The phrase "other levels of government" refers to

• A. international assistance from other countries
• B. federal, state and municipal administrations
• C. overseas aid programmes and NGOs
• D. the ministries of the federal government
• E. the federal administration acting alone