Bribery on the increase GHANA HAS been named among countries in the world where petty bribery is rampant.
Transparency International's “Global Corruption Barometer 2009” released recently, named Venezuela, Ghana, Indonesia, Cambodia, Bolivia, Senegal, Russia and Kenya, as countries where the practice has been on the rise with the poor persistently hard hit.
According to the report, this situation has compounded the already difficult situation of low-income households and threatened jobs as well as income.
“The private sector uses bribes to influence public policy, laws and regulations,” over half of the more than 73,000 respondents drawn from 69 countries and territories around the world, who polled for the 2009 survey, said.
Half of these also 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,” Huguette Labelle, Transparency International's Chair noted, adding: “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.”
Stressing that the poor are disproportionately burdened by bribe demands, the report found that efforts by governments 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 survey therefore 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 perceive different domestic institutions to be, half of respondents said they see 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 identify the private sector as the most corrupt institution.
In Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, more than 50 percent of respondents reported having to pay a bribe in the past 12 months.
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.
By Samuel Boadi
Source: Daily Guide - Daily Guide
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