Comprehension check

Task 1

What do these numbers refer to?

170; 2008; 10 billions; 11; 170; 1 billion; 13; 500, 000;2 billions.

Task 2

Answer the questions to the text.

1. Why does Russia have a huge potential for developing business?

2. Is Russia the world leader in production of oil and gas?

3. Are strategic resources in Russia under state control?

4. What factory was pronounced a hero factory?

5. What did Russia inherit from the Soviet Union?

6. What are the most popular types of export weaponry?

7. Which companies are already assembled in Russia?

8. Which industry was created in the last 5 years?

9. What problems do businesses in Russia have?

Task 3

Read these sentences. Being grammatically correct, they do not make sense as their endings have been mixed up. Rearrange the sentences so that they make sense.

1. Russia has developed the crisis.

2. Russia’s automobile industry is recuperating from most of the defense industrial base of the Soviet Union.

3. The country inherited tax breaks to companies that start major assembly lines in Russia.

4. The Russian government has offered large manufacturing capacities, notably in machinery.

5. Businesses in Russia are the single-largest manufactured goods export category for the country.

6. Magnitogorsk plant is completely held by 13 per cent of world reserves.

7. Russia is one of the world’s leading producers of oil and gas, holding private investors.

8. Armaments are focused on developing and implementing strategies to ensure their long-term survival.

Focus on grammar

Task 1.

Make the nouns plural.

Business, company, structure, industry, category, vehicle, country, factory, plant, strategy, agency, basis, chief, hero.

Task 2.

Fill in the gaps with the verbs in brackets. Put them in the necessary form.

As heavy industry ………. (to labour) under the crisis – industrial production………. (to shrunk) 10.8 per cent in 2009 – the government …………(to introduce) a range of programmes to develop Russia’s underfunded small businesses. Virtually every proposal, which used to be getting dusty lying on the shelves for a long time, ………… (to be implemented) by the government fully or partially.

Small businesses now ……….(to employ) around 11 million people in Russia, and there ………(to be) some 350,000 small businesses in Russia, including 120,00 individual entrepreneurs, but experts ………(to predict) this number will grow in 2010.

“The contraction in the small business sector during the crisis ……….. (not exceed) 3 to 5 per cent, and the segment ……….(to start) growing at the start of 2010,” said Sergei Korotkov, Citybank Russia’s vice-president responsible for SME business. “We expect that by the end 2010 we ……….(to see) an increase up to 1.5 million small companies”.

Russia still ……….. (to lag) behind more developed economies in terms of the number of small businesses, though the government ………(to say) it hopes to bring employment through SMEs closer to the 70 per cent in the United States.