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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Release of 2009 Global Corruption Barometer

Release of 2009 Global Corruption Barometer

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published Published on Sep 11, 2009   modified Modified on Sep 11, 2009

The private sector uses bribes to influence public policy, laws and regulations, believe over half of those polled for 2009 Global Corruption Barometer. The Barometer, a global public opinion survey released today by Transparency International (TI), also found that half of respondents expressed a willingness to pay a premium to buy from corruption-free companies.

“These results show a public sobered by a financial crisis precipitated by weak regulations and a lack of corporate accountability,” said Transparency International Chair, Huguette Labelle. “But we also see that the public is willing to actively support clean business. What is needed now is bold action by companies to continue strengthening their policies and practices, and to report more transparently on finances and interactions with government.”

The Barometer, with more than 73,000 respondents drawn from 69 countries and territories around the world, also found the poor to be disproportionately burdened by bribe demands. And it found that government efforts to combat corruption are generally perceived as ineffective, in addition to high levels of perceived corruption in political parties, parliaments and the civil service.

The business-related findings of the Barometer send a powerful signal to the private sector and provide yet another incentive -in addition to the legal, reputational and financial risks of corruption- for companies to prove that they are clean and to communicate this clearly to the public. In Cambodia, Hong Kong, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as many as 4 in 5 respondents said they would pay a premium for products and services from corruption-free companies.

Asked specifically how corrupt they perceived different domestic institutions to be, half of respondents said they saw the private sector as corrupt, an increase of 8 percentage points over five years ago. And in roughly a fifth of the countries and territories surveyed, including countries home to some of the world’s major financial centres, such as Hong Kong, Luxembourg and Switzerland, respondents identified the private sector as the most corrupt institution.

“Companies must engage meaningfully with the reporting frameworks and anti-corruption codes now available and begin applying these in earnest, reporting clearly and honestly about their efforts, and benchmarking their policies and practices,” said Robin Hodess, Director of Policy and Research at Transparency International.

Petty bribery and economic crisis: Poor punished twice

The 2009 Barometer shows that the poorest families continue to be punished by petty bribe demands. Across the board, low-income respondents were more likely to be met with bribe demands than high-income respondents. Additionally, petty bribery was found to be on the rise in Venezuela, Ghana, Indonesia, Cambodia Bolivia, Senegal, Russia and Kenya, compounding the already difficult situation of low-income households, as jobs and income dwindle in the economic downturn.

“As economic growth shifts into reverse, poor households are increasingly forced to make impossible choices in allocating scarce resources,” said TI Chair Huguette Labelle. “Do parents pay a bribe so that a sick child can see the doctor or do they buy food for their family? It is simply unacceptable that families continue to face these decisions.”

In Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, more than 50 percent of respondents reported having to pay a bribe in the past 12 months. Looking at regions, however, the Middle East and North Africa registered the worst results, with 4 in 10 respondents reporting bribe payments in the past year. The police were identified as the most common source of bribe demands: globally, one in four of those who had contact with the police in the previous year paid a bribe.

Government anti-corruption efforts seen as ineffective

Only three in ten respondents believed their government’s efforts to fight corruption were effective, although opinion in Sub-Saharan Africa was notably more positive than in other regions.

Most of those polled also felt that existing channels for making corruption-related complaints were ineffective. Fewer than one in four who paid a bribe in the past year lodged a formal complaint, demonstrating serious deficits in the perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of channels for reporting and addressing bribery. “Governments must listen closely to what ordinary people are reporting or face the consequences of an increasingly alienated and distrustful citizenry,” said Labelle.

Echoing the findings of past editions of the Barometer, 68 percent of respondents saw political parties as corrupt, and 29 percent saw them as the single most corrupt institution in their country. The civil service and parliament trailed political parties, perceived by 63 and 60 percent of respondents respectively as being corrupt. The media, while not perceived as clean, scored best with just over 40 percent of respondents labelling the sector as corrupt and with only 6 percent seeing it as the single most corrupt domestic institution.

Public demand for greater integrity in government and business

The tragically familiar stories of this year’s Barometer are the negative perceptions of public institutions and government anti-corruption efforts, and low-income households saddled with petty bribe payments for ostensibly free services. New this year was the increasingly critical view of the private sector and a public motivated to pay a premium for clean business. The 2009 Barometer makes clear that both the private and public sectors have a great deal of work to do to win back the public trust.

Transparency International’s (TI) 2009 Global Corruption Barometer (the Barometer) presents the main findings of a public opinion survey that explores the general public’s views of corruption, as well as experiences of bribery around the world. It assesses the extent to which key institutions and public services are perceived to be corrupt, measures citizens’ views on government efforts to fight corruption, and this year, for the first time, includes questions about the level of state capture and people’s willingness to pay a premium for clean corporate behaviour.

The Barometer is designed to complement the expert opinions on public sector corruption provided by TI’s Corruption Perceptions Index and the views of senior business executives on international bribery flows reflected in TI’s Bribe Payers Index. It also aims to provide information on trends in public perceptions of corruption. Now in its sixth edition, the Barometer enables assessments of change over time; in terms of the institutions deemed to be most corrupt, the effectiveness of governments’ efforts to fight corruption, and the proportion of citizens paying bribes. The 2009 Barometer interviewed 73,132 people in 69 countries and territories between October 2008 and February 2009. The main findings are as follows:

Corruption in and by the private sector is of growing concern to the general public

• The private sector is perceived to be corrupt by half of those interviewed: a notable increase of eight percentage points compared to five years ago.

• The general public is critical of the private sector’s role in their countries’ policy making processes. More than half of respondents held the view that bribery is often used to shape policies and regulations in companies’ favour. This perception is particularly widespread in the Newly Independent States+3, and to a slightly lesser extent in countries in the Americas, and the Western Balkans + Turkey.

• Corruption matters to consumers. Half of those interviewed expressed a willingness to pay a premium to buy from a company that is ‘corruption-free’.

Political parties and the civil service are perceived on average to be the most corrupt sectors around the world

• Globally, respondents perceived political parties as the single most corrupt domestic institution, followed closely by the civil service.

• Aggregate results, however, mask important country differences. In 13 of the countries sampled, the private sector was deemed to be the most corrupt, while in 11 countries respondents identified the judiciary.

Experience of petty bribery is reported to be growing in some parts of the world – with the police the most likely recipients of bribes

• More than 1 in 10 people interviewed reported having paid a bribe in the previous 12 months, reflecting reported levels of bribery similar to those captured in the 2005 Barometer. For 4 in 10 respondents who paid bribes, payments amounted, on average, to around 10 per cent of their annual income.

• The countries reported to be most affected by petty bribery are (in alphabetical order): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Cameroon, Iraq, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

• Regionally, experiences of petty bribery are most common in the Middle East and North Africa, the Newly Independent States+ and Sub-Saharan Africa.

• Although the police are most frequently reported to receive bribes worldwide, regional differences also emerge. In the Middle East and North Africa, the most bribe-prone institutions are reported to be those handling procedures related to buying, selling, inheriting or renting land. In EU+ countries these land services along with healthcare are most vulnerable to petty bribery. While incidences of petty bribery in North America appear to be very low, those that do occur are reportedly most frequent in interactions with the judiciary.

• Results indicate that respondents from low-income households are more likely to pay bribes than those fromhigh-income households when dealing with the police, the judiciary, land services and the education services.

Ordinary people do not feel empowered to speak out about corruption

• The general public does not routinely use formal channels to lodge bribery-related complaints: three quarters of people who reported paying bribes did not file a formal complaint.

• About half of bribery victims interviewed did not see existing complaint mechanisms as effective. This view was consistent regardless of gender, education or age.

Governments are considered to be ineffective in the fight against corruption – a view that has remained worryingly consistent in most countries over time

• Overall, the general public consider their governments’ efforts to tackle corruption to be ineffective. Only 31 per cent perceived them as effective, compared to the 56 per cent that viewed government anti-corruption measures to be ineffective.

• There were no major changes in recorded opinion on government anti-corruption efforts in 2009 when comparing those countries assessed in the last edition of the Barometer in 2007.

Sources:

Transparency International, http://transparency.org/publications/publications/gcb2009

http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_re
leases/2009/2009_06_03_gcb2009_en

 

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