Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog body monitoring corruption worldwide, released the first ever Bribe Payers' Indexes (BPI) in its latest annual report. Its chairman Peter Eigen said the governments of the bribe-paying countries should take tougher measures to deter corporations in their respective nations from paying kickbacks abroad.

The BPI listed 19 leading exporting countries whose corporations had shown a propensity to pay kickbacks abroad. China (including Hong Kong) fared worst with 3.1 points. On a scale from zero to 10-with zero representing responses that indicated very high levels of bribery, and 10 representing a perceived level of negligible bribery. Sweden with 8.3 points had the best score followed by Australia and Canada at 8.1 each, Austria (7.8),Switzerland (7.7), the Netherlands (7.4) and Britain (7.2). The US and Germany ranked in the middle with 6.2 points each. The BPI, based on a survey conducted by Gallup International in 14 emerging market countries, including India, involved detailed questions addressed to more than 770 senior executives at major companies, chartered accountant firms, chambers of commerce, major commercial banks and law firms. The respondents also included foreign nationals and executives at international firms. The questions related to bribes given to senior public officials by corporations. The timing of the BPI's release coincides with attempts by a number of developed countries to intensify efforts to force members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in terms of its Anti-Bribery Convention, to stop their transnational corporations from paying bribes abroad. TI wanted to draw attention to the need for full implementation and enforcement, said Eigen. "The 1999 BPI therefore provides abaseline to assess the successful implementation of the convention," he said.

Eigen explained that while the BPI is a distinct survey commissioned by TI and conducted by Gallup, the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was a "poll of polls" and the two indices had, consequently, been created with quite different methodologies and were not directly comparable. But, he added, they are "two sides of the same coin"; the former ranked the home countries of the payers of international bribes while the latter ranked countries in terms of the degree to which they are perceived to be the homes of bribe-takers.

India and Pakistan, have, traditionally, figured among TI's list of most corrupt nations of the world. However, Eigen cautioned against sweeping generalisations about poor countries. "Again this year we are seeing many very poor countries in the lowest positions on the CPI. We would caution that it would be wrong to call these countries the most corrupt in the world. Our index covers more countries than everbefore, but we just do not have sufficient credible data to include over 80 other countries," he said.

Eigen urged governments of countries with low CPI scores to do far more to publicly acknowledge the problems, confront the issues, subject the corrupt companies and officials to prosecution and earn public confidence with their anti-bribery policies. "Some countries have begun to take such action, but have initiated reforms so recently that these are not reflected in the polls on which the CP is based," Eigen said.

In the 1999 CPI, India ranked 72 (2.9 points) and Pakistan 87 (2.2), while China was given 58th position (3.4). Other South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan were not mentioned in the list, although the number of countries surveyed for the CPI was 99 for the current year, up from 85 last year and 52 in 1997. A German analyst said the TI's decision to publicise the BPI was a response to sharp criticism in the past of its "one-sided exposure of corruption in theThird World without pointing the finger at the culprits in the rich developed countries."

The TI also made it a point to spell out that the poll for the bribe-takers' index is based only on perceptions. "The CPI is based on polls, which are snapshots in time and solely reflect opinions," said Eigen.

-- India Abroad News Service