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Honesty skids on
oil
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON -
Oil-producing countries are among the most corrupt, a
new survey by Transparency International shows.
A corruption perceptions index produced by the
independent Berlin-based organization shows that
"oil-rich Angola, Azerbaijan, Chad, Ecuador, Indonesia,
Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan,
Venezuela and Yemen all have extremely low scores",
Transparency International (TI) chairman Peter Eigen
said at the announcement of the 2004 index in London
this week.
Oil has emerged as the area that
attracts most corruption, along with construction works
and defense, the survey shows. The common corrupt thread
"that ties all three together is public procurement",
Jeff Lovitt from TI told Inter Press Service (IPS). The
right to drill, royalties and such transactions in the
oil business mean a lot of dealing with government, and
corruption follows, he said.
The "curse of oil"
meant that many resource-rich countries were way down on
the list of countries in the corruption index, and also
therefore among the poorest, Lovitt said.
In
oil-rich countries "public contracting in the oil sector
is plagued by revenues vanishing into the pockets of
Western oil executives, middlemen and local officials,"
Eigen said.
TI is urging Western governments to
oblige their oil companies to publish what they pay in
fees, royalties and other payments to host governments
and state oil companies. "Access to this vital
information will minimize opportunities for hiding the
payment of kickbacks to secure oil tenders, a practice
that has blighted the oil industry in transition and
postwar economies," said Eigen.
Iraq presents a
particular need, he said. "The future of Iraq depends on
transparency in the oil sector ... without strict
anti-bribery measures, the reconstruction of Iraq will
be wrecked by a wasteful diversion of resources to
corrupt elites."
Corruption was perceived to be
most acute in Bangladesh, Haiti, Nigeria, Chad, Myanmar,
Azerbaijan and Paraguay. The cleanest countries were
Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Iceland, Singapore,
Switzerland and Norway.
The United Kingdom came
in at position 11 followed by Canada (12), Germany (15)
the United States (17), Chile (20), France (22), Japan
(24), Israel (26), Brazil (59), Thailand (64), Sri Lanka
(67), China (71) Egypt, Morocco and Turkey (77), India
and Russia (90), and the Philippines (102).
The
index does not follow a predictable path of rich nations
being less corrupt than poor ones, though that is the
broad trend. Botswana comes at position 31 while Italy
is 42, South Africa is 44 while Greece is 49.
But more than giving "marks" to countries, the
survey points to the dangers corruption brings to many
of the developing countries particularly. TI estimates
that at least US$400 billion is lost worldwide every
year due to bribery in government procurement.
"If we hope to reach the Millennium Development
Goal of halving the number of people living in extreme
poverty by 2015, governments need to seriously tackle
corruption in public contracting," Eigen said.
"Corruption robs countries of their potential."
The TI index is a perceptions index; it does not
arise from any direct study carried out by TI. TI calls
it "a poll of polls" that reflects "the perceptions of
business people, and country analysts, both resident and
non-resident". The corruption perceptions index draws on
18 surveys provided to TI between 2002 and 2004,
conducted by 12 independent institutions.
This
inevitably raises several questions about the
methodology behind the TI index, where varying surveys
by several institutions in different areas are brought
together to give a single list of ranking.
But
the surveys on which the index is based "were selected
on the basis that similar questions were asked about
corruption", Lovitt said. A high confidence and low
confidence range included in the TI index covers
differences in survey methodologies, Lovitt said. The
findings therefore have a "high degree of consistency",
he said.
The index also includes only those
countries that feature in at least three surveys. TI
acknowledges that "many countries - including some which
could be among the most corrupt - are missing because
there simply [are] not enough survey data available".
(Inter Press Service)
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