India’s Bribery Rate Highest in Asia at 39%: Report

The survey report also highlights India’s rate of using personal connections for public services at 46 percent.

Bribe. 

Photo Courtesy: IANS Infographics

According to a recent survey report released by Transparency International, India has emerged as the Asian country having the highest rate of bribery at 39 percent. It also has the highest percentage (46 percent) of people who use personal connections to avail public services, Time of India reported.

Of the people who are a part of this cycle of corruption, 50 percent were asked to pay bribes while 32 percent believe that they would not have access to services otherwise.

The survey that took place between June and September of this year, took into consideration 20,000 people across 17 countries, and sought their experiences with corruption and their perceptions about the prevalence of it.

The Global Corruption Barometer for the Asia region also highlighted the rate of people in India who engaged in giving bribes to the police (42 percent) and who gave bribes to obtain official documents (41 percent). Personal connections were used by 39 percent of the people in the survey when dealing with the police, and 38 percent when dealing with the courts and matters of law. Six similar public services, such as police, courts, public hospitals, procurement of identity documents and IDs, were covered in the report.

India was followed by Cambodia, which had the second highest bribery rate at 37 percent, followed by Indonesia at 30 percent. The lowest bribery rates in Asia were found to be in Japan (2 percent), South Korea (10 percent) and Nepal (12 percent). However, the survey report pointed out that even in these countries, more could be done to stop corruption.

In January 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, India had ranked 80th out of 180 countries in the World Corruption Perception Index.

(With inputs from Times of India)