Business news

Listen to the business news to practise and improve your listening skills.

Instructions

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

The first item in the news today is the recent elections that took place across the country. This was a crucial vote, which may see a dramatic change in how the country develops over the coming years. Overall, a 54.5 per cent voter turnout was registered. This represents an increase of 11 per cent over the previous election and six per cent above the average for the past 50 years. There has also been a slight change in demographics, with an increase in youth turnout in the 18- to 24- and 24- to 29-year-old brackets. Despite this increase, young people are still less likely to vote than older people; 84 per cent of voters in the 70 plus age group came to the polling stations.

Moving on, the global digital powerhouse ONK today posted quarterly results which were above forecast. Back in March, Tim Bolling, CEO, issued a profit warning over fears that there would be losses following the recall of their leading product, the 40d device. In fact, the company posted quarterly revenue of US$14.8 billion which represents an increase of 11 per cent from the same quarter a year ago. They also announced that they had sold 21 million 40d devices over the quarter. The company has provided the information that with this level of revenue, there will be a gross margin of 34 to 35 per cent, ultimately leading to a US$1.20 per share cash dividend awarded to shareholders.

And in our final news item we ask, will we soon be saying goodbye to coins and notes forever? The nationwide trend of using cashless payment options is increasing. There are a number of reasons for this development. A key reason for this is a growing interest in reducing the number of items people need to leave their homes with. As almost everyone carries a smartphone with them, and many people also have smartwatches, the ability to pay for things using one of these two technologies is particularly appealing. More and more retailers are accepting cashless payments and in some cases they've stopped accepting cash altogether.

Task 1

Exercise

Task 2

Exercise

Discussion

Write a short overview of statistics, figures or trends that you are familiar with.

Download

Worksheet87.93 KB

Try another listening

Language level

B2 - Upper intermediate

Do you need to improve your English listening skills?

Join thousands of learners from around the world who are improving their English listening skills with our online courses.

Find out more

The impact of COVID-19 on international tourism has been overwhelmed within the last two years. In 2019, 100% of worldwide destinations introduced travel restrictions and 27% of the countries kept their borders completely closed for international flights. In consequence, there was a -74% of loss for international arrivals around the world.

The pandemic COVID-19 has caused a decrease in employment in Colombia, 25 percent of Colombians are unemployed due to the health crisis that has kicked the country since last year.

In 2019 Peru was the 5th best economy in Latin-American but at the same time my country was one of those invested the least in public health. The government invested only 3.3% of GDP. To put it in context, in Chile, a neighboring country, they invested a 5% of GPD in health. Two years later we realize corruption is more dangerous than any virus.

according to the statistics in the year 2020, the number of social media users, especially facebook and instgram, in the UK is on increase: roughtly 45 million active social media users, that means rate 66% of population.The majority ist adults,37 million.

It is only the beggining of 2021 and Brazil is already facing a "second wave" of the virus. Cases are rising around 50% over the last two weeks and the hospital beds are at 90% of occupation. Brazilians are still waiting for a vaccine to come, but the government has no certain date to start immunizing people, saying just "late January/early February".

About tech skills most in demand for the future, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are highly demanded tech skills. Hiring growth for AI specialists has increased over the past few years, it has grown 74% anually over the past 4 years. According to McKinsey, 49% of companies are currently exploring or planning to use machine learning, which makes it one of the most profitable skills you can learn. Skills related to data science and analytics are consistently in demand tech skills as well, in fact, 84% of enterprises have launched advanced analytics and Big Data initiatives to accelerate their decision-making and bring greater accuracy. Note: the statistical information in the comment has been extracted from a post from a code learning website.

Since I can remember our country has always had high unemployment averages, before the pandemic percentage had double digits around 10.9%. And now at least 4 millions of Colombian don't have an employ, due quarantine unemployment has reached 20 per cent and in some cities it is about 30 per cent. Just to open the economy again doesn't fix those issues. All this affects the demand overall, not just for people who don't have money to buy due to his unemployment condition insead people which reduce his demand for fear of losing his current job. The government has established new laws to try to increase the employability and reduce the hit to the economy left by covid but are not enough.

The number of patients contracting the Covid-19 virus is continuously increasing in countries like USA, Philippines and Brazil. Due to the rigorous stages of vaccine testing, the earliest is expected to be released on April 2021. But this poses another question: when will this vaccine reach third-world country like the Philippines and Brazil? For this reason, scientists speculates that herd immunity can possibly stop the spread of the virus. However, this will require 66% or one-third of the country's population (or local) to be positive of the disease.

The presidential election has been held in 2016, and the government has offered several polling stations in each region. The voter turnout before the election was presented and their purposes of parties. The Group of Demographics for voting will include from 16 to 100 age

The victims of drug trafficking since 2006, with the war on drugs to the present 250 thousand people have died, registered, in 2006 the rate was 10.89 homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, when his term ended, the rate doubled with Enrique peña and followed the same path.