Despite Malaysia’s high-profile anticorruption crusade, half of the corporate executives surveyed by a global corruption watchdog believe that competitors have obtained business through bribery, underscoring the hard task ahead for the government in weeding out graft.
Transparency International said Malaysia scored worst in the 2012 Bribe Payers Survey. It asked about 3,000 executives from 30 countries whether they had lost a contract in the past year because competitors paid a bribe—and in Malaysia, 50% said yes. Second on the dubious honor roll was Mexico, at 48%.
Japan ranked as the world’s least-corrupt place to do business, with just 2% of respondents saying they had lost out due to bribery; Malaysia’s neighbor Singapore was second-cleanest, at 9%. Even Indonesia, with a long-standing reputation for corruption, fared better than more-developed Malaysia: Southeast Asia’s largest economy came in at 47%. By comparison, 27% of respondents in China said they thought bribes had cost them business.
“It shows the attitude of private companies in Malaysia, indicating that bribery in the public sector could be systemic and in a sense institutionalized,” said Paul Low, president of the Malaysian chapter of Transparency International.
Source : WSJ
The Coverage Malaysia
