Translate the newspaper item from English into Russian. Use a dictionary. Twenty-nine of the world's 100 biggest economic entities are multinational companies, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Twenty-nine of the world's 100 biggest economic entities are multinational companies, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The field is led by the US energy group Exxon, which is larger than all but 44 national economies.

The activities of the 100 biggest companies, measured on the basis of value-added – the yardstick used to calculate countries' gross domestic product – accounted for 4.3 per cent of world GDP in 2000, up from 3.5 per cent in 1990, UNCTAD said.

Exxon, with estimated value-added of $63bn (€ 64.9bn) was about the same size as the economy of Pakistan and larger than Peru's, while Ford, Daimler Chrysler, General Electric and Toyota were all comparable in size to the economy of Nigeria.

Philip Morris, the tobacco group, was on a par with Tunisia, Slovakia and Guatemala, while BP, Wal-Mart, IBM and Volkswagen all ranked in size between Libya and Cuba.

GlaxoSmithKline and ВТ, the smallest of the top 100 multinationals, were equal in size to Syria.

Anti-globalisation protesters have often complained that multinational companies are wealthier and more powerful than the economies of many countries in which they do business.

Protesters say the alleged imbalance puts small countries at a disadvantage in international trade and argue strict global rules are needed to govern such companies' conduct.

UNCTAD said its measures showed the economic importance of the 100 biggest multinationals relative to national economies had grown in the past decade, although the position of the 20 largest companies had receded slightly over the same period.

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