Global Corruption Barometer 2009: people's experience and perception about corruption

Transparency International released its 2009 Global Corruption Barometer.   As opposed to TI's expert opinion survey -the Corruption Perception Index-, the Barometer is a public opinion survey that captures perceptions and experiences of corruption of more than 73,000 people in 69 countries.

Some of the corruption issues addressed by the survey are: perception of corruption in the private sector, petty bribery in general and in different services, perception of most corruption institutions/sectors, corruption denunciation and use of complaint mechanisms, and perception of governments' effectiveness in the fight against corruption.

Among the main results in this year's survey are:

• Political parties and civil servants were considered to be the single most corrupt institutions -29 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
• The private sector was considered the single most corrupt institution mainly in developed countries -Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain and Switzerland.
• Political parties were the other single most corrupt institution considered in developed countries -Austria, Finland, Greece, Israel, Italy, South Korea and the UK.
• The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region recorded the largest number of people who report paying a bribe over the last year -40 percent of total respondents.
• All countries most affected by bribery (more than 50 percent of respondents reporting bribe payments- are in Africa -Cameroon, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda.
• The police is the institution most likely to be bribed -24 percent of respondents reported paying bribes in the past year.
• The judiciary was the institution that registered the largest increase of corruption reported over the last years -14 percent of respondents in 2009 vs. 8 percent in 2006.
• Poorer households paid significantly more bribes to get some services -police, judiciary, land services and education.
• The main reason for not complaining about corrupt was that people thought it would have not helped at all -51 percent of respondents.
• Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the region with the highest percentage of people who felt their governments' anti-corruption efforts were effective -64 percent of respondents.
• Comparing the same group of countries, public's perception about the private sector shaping policies and regulation through bribes is significantly larger than the perception of senior business executives -54 percent of respondents reported in the Barometer vs. 32 percent of respondent reported in the Bribe Payers Index.

For more details, you can find the report here.