2. 外语
  3. Earlier this year I met with a group of women in Matela, a small farming village in Tanzania, and we discussed something that’s

Earlier this year I met with a group of women in Matela, a small farming village in Tanzania, and we discussed something that’s

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问题     Earlier this year I met with a group of women in Matela, a small farming village in Tanzania, and we discussed something that’s been on all of our minds lately: finding a safe place to save money. The women said their babies were getting sick from malaria(疟疾), and they could afford the drugs if they saved money over time—but with no access to formal savings accounts, they had a hard time safeguarding cash. So they saved in risky and inefficient ways. They made loans to each other, or bought goats or jewelry, then sold them if they suddenly needed money.
    The success of microloans has opened new opportunities for many poor people and has been a crucial factor in reducing poverty. But loans are not enough. Savings accounts could help people in the developing world with unexpected events, accumulate money to invest in education, increase their productivity and income, and build their financial security. Fortunately, this is a moment of opportunity. New policy ideas are uniting in ways that will lower the cost of savings and bring safe financial services to the doorsteps of the poor.
    One exciting trend is agent banking, in which stores and post offices serve as banking outlets. Banks still manage and guarantee the deposits, but they rely on the infrastructure(基础设施)of other outlets to deal with clients where there are no bank branches.
    The phenomenal growth of mobile phones in the developing world presents another opportunity. M-Pesa, the mobile-phone cash-transfer service in Kenya, has signed up more than 5 million subscribers in two years and recently expanded to Tanzania. This new idea is opening markets and transforming lives. A split-second M-Pesa transaction costs as little as 30 cents and replaces a day of risk and expense just to send someone money or carry earnings home.
    At the Gates Foundation, it has been committed more than $350 million to make financial services widely accessible to the poor because safe places to save can help break the cycle of poverty. If action is taken on this moment, then within a generation, billions of people will have the chance to build up then-savings and live the healthy, productive lives that they deserve.
Compared with agent banking, M-Pesa most probably ______.
选项 A、is less practical for poor people
B、is more popular among clients
C、costs less except transaction fees
D、provides safer savings accounts
答案C
解析 原文该句表明通过M-Pesa交易只要交纳手续费，as little as很好地提示了其花费较低，因此，本题应选C。
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大学英语四级

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