The Barometer, a global public opinion survey released Wednesday by TI, also fou nd 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 TI Chair Huguette Labelle. “But we also see that the public is willing to active ly 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 Barometre, with more than 73,000 respondents drawn from 69 countries and ter ritories around the world, also found the poor to be disproportionately burdened by bribe demands, and 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 Barometre send a powerful signal to the pri vate 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 an d 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 coun tries 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 i nstitution.
“Companies must engage meaningfully with the reporting frameworks and anti-corru ption 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.
The 2009 Barometre also 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.
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 resp ondents 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.
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.
Echoing the findings of past editions of the Barometre, 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.
The tragically familiar stories of this year’s Barometre 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 Barometre makes clear that both the private and public sectors have a great deal of work to do to win back the public trust.
Lagos - 03/06/2009
Pana
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