Bribery costs $1 trillion a year - World Bank
Pastor Dale Morgan
Bribery costs $1 trillion a year - World Bank*
Ashley Seager
Wednesday July 11, 2007
The Guardian
Bribery is costing the world $1 trillion a year with the burden falling
disproportionately on the billion or so people living in extreme
poverty, the World Bank said yesterday.
In a report on the quality of governance in the world's countries over
the past decade, the Bank added that many poor countries had
significantly improved governance and clamped down on corruption in
recent years.
"Such improvements are critical for aid effectiveness and for sustained
long-run growth," said Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the report and
director of global programmes at the World Bank Institute, the Bank's
research arm.
"The hopeful news is that a considerable number of countries, including
in Africa, are showing that it is possible to make significant
governance progress in a relatively short period of time."
The world's rich countries have over the past decade written off many of
the debts of the world's poorest countries under the Bank's Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and increased aid flows to
them on condition that they stamp out corruption so that the poor see
the benefit. The report emphasised that good governance matters for
other aspects of development such as infant mortality, illiteracy and
inequality. It has also been found to significantly enhance the
effectiveness of development assistance in general, and of World Bank
funded projects in particular.
The Bank says the report contains the most complete set of data on
governance yet published.
Some African countries are making significant strides on the path to
good governance, it says, in particular Kenya, Niger, Sierra Leone, on
accountability of their leaders, Algeria and Liberia on the rule of law,
Algeria, Angola, Libya, Rwanda and Sierra Leone on political stability
and Tanzania on corruption.
Emerging economies such as Chile, Botswana and Costa Rica as well as
Estonia and the Czech republic, are matching rich countries on
governance. More than a dozen score higher on good governance than
Greece or Italy.
Despite improvements in individual countries, the average quality of
governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade,
the report adds.
For the countries that have done well, there have been a similar number
that have deteriorated, including Zimbabwe, Cote D'Ivoire, Belarus and
Venezuela.