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The Beginning Of The Anti Corruption Sentiment Economics Essay
多年来，参与科学合理利用资金，通过上述多边金融机构拨付而导致的日益增加的腐败现象已引起了全世界的谴责；因此这样就出现了一个需求：用政策框架来对付这种威胁。事实上，过去的十年里，我们发现国际社会在解决腐败问题的兴趣显著增加。从1998年至今，约有38个国家已经批准了经合组织反贿赂公约。不同的约定，从2005开始被称为是联合国反腐败公约。在2007年加强治理世界银行集团参与和反腐败（GAC）和外国腐败行为的行动，这是由美国司法部和证券交易委员会的策略。除了这些，许多国际援助机构包括千年挑战公司已经有了一个国家的腐败的记录来援助资金给一些低收入的国家。
让我们不再矫揉造作，我们需要解决腐败的重症。一个又一个世纪后，是时候让我们在这个问题上采取行动了！
Over the years, the increased corruption involved in utilizing appropriately, funds disbursed by the aforesaid multi lateral financial institutions has attracted worldwide condemnation; thus emerged the need for a policy framework to deal with this menace. As a matter of fact, the last decade has witnessed a prominent increase in the international community’s interest in tackling corruption. From the year 1998 till date, about 38 countries have ratified the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Different conventions that have henceforth been called are the UN Convention against corruption in 2005, Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anti-corruption (GAC) strategy in 2007 and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Action by US Department of Justice and the Security and Exchange Commission. In addition to these, many international aid agencies including the Millennium Challenge Corporation have made a country’s corruption record a parameter for making aid disbursements to low-income countries.1
The Beginning of the Anti-corruption Sentiment
“Let us not mince words; we need to deal with the cancer of corruption .In country after country , it is the people who are demanding action on the issue. They know that corruption diverts resources from the poor to the rich , increases the cost of running businesses, distorts public expenditures, and deters foreign investors. They also knew that it erodes the constituency for aid programs and humanitarian relief.And we all know that it is a major barrier to sound and equitable development ….Let me emphasize that the Bank Group will not tolerate corruption in the programs we support; and we are taking steps to ensure that our activities continue to meet high standards of probity” 2 – Mr. James P. Wesberry Jr., President of World Bank in Oct, 1996 - World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings
Evidently, the misuse of these funds by the beneficiaries for their own personal gains, highly impact the poor of the country for whom these funds are actually intended. Further, it is noteworthy to recall that one of the Indian Prime Ministers formally announced in parliament that only 15% of aid money got through to its intended beneficiaries. Such corrupt practices of bribes and illicit kick-backs put up the prices of the projects and pose a serious problem for public authorities and public; as it makes services costly, undermines development, and distorts rational decision making. Over a period of time, ordinary public end up paying through the cut-in basic infrastructure necessities. Increasing corruption across the internationally funded projects would ultimately lead the country into a serious debt crisis, thus making it difficult for it to pay the loan with interest back to these multi-lateral banks.
Corruption Scenario in India
A Global Financial Integrity Report suggests that India lost US$462 billion since independence in illegal capital flows. Corruption in Arms-deals was a worldwide phenomenon and India also witnessed one of its biggest bribery scandals in the history of independent India connected to the arms dealings. In 1986, the Indian government bought field guns worth US$1.3 billion for Indian army from Swedish firm ‘Bofors’. Within months of the completion of the deal, Swedish radio claimed that kickbacks worth millions were paid to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his associates. In one of the other instances, Mr. Natwar Singh, a former cabinet minister was charged by Independent U.N. Enquiry Committee (Volcker Committee) as a beneficiary of illegal pay-offs in Iraqi Oil-for-food scam. Such examples portray a negative image of the Indian bureaucrats in handling the public money. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, provided evidence of Indian money stashed into Swiss Banks. He added saying “There is more Indian money in the Swiss banks than any other nationality.”
In addition to the cash-stashing into the overseas banks, tax havens around the world also play a part in boosting the corruption by creating financial environment which allows complete freedom to the companies due to lack of transparency in the operation of legislative, legal or administrative provisions. Such lack of transparency makes it difficult for other tax authorities to apply their laws effectively. This loophole is used by many corrupt bureaucrats in routing their illicit cash flows through irrelevant companies operating in such tax havens.
Recent scams like auctioning of 2G licenses in the telecom sector and the corrupt practices adopted in hiring of contractors in CWG have led to the rise of public sentiment in the form of India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. On the Corruption Perception Index, India scored 3.1/10.0, ranked 95th amongst 183 countries. Such dismal score underlines the public frustration and anger against the government handling of the public funds.
Corruption Perception Index Rankings: Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is one of the tools which ranks countries and territories according to their perceived levels of public sector corruption. CPI combines different sources of information about corruption, making it possible to compare countries across the world. On the Corruption Perception Index, India scored 3.1/10.0, and thus ranked 95th amongst 183 countries. Such dismal score underlines the public frustration and anger against government handling of the public funds.
Importance of World Bank in Indian Context
India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico form a major part of the total funding made by World Bank for different developmental projects. India is the highest beneficiary of the funds available for developmental projects, with 551 projects totalling US$91.92 billion. A bird’s eye view comparison of the developing countries’ funded projects vis-a-vis their CPI rankings can be seen in Table 1.
INITIATIVES AGAINST CORRUPTION
Structural Adjustment Programmes :
Initially, these multi-national banks used to provide outside consultancy on the issues of governance to the beneficiary countries, wherein the role of the banks was limited to assessing the feasibility and the need of the projects; and finally providing the funds for the execution of the selected projects. The World Bank and IMF were not allowed to intervene in the internal political systems of the participating and beneficiary countries. To promote the idea of good governance, these institutions implemented Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in 1980s, wherein the beneficiary countries were compelled to change their internal structures to promote further participation of the private players and NGOs in the implementation of the funded projects. The SAPs introduced a macro-economic level conditionality into the bank’s lending activities. SAPs were built on one of the fundamental condition that debtor countries would have to repay their debts in hard currency. Such measures led to huge debt crisis across the debtor countries, with increased inflation and decreased currency exchange. However, despite such measures, the economic performance of the countries worsened.
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Corruption, until late 1990s, was considered a taboo and a highly political issue which could not be handled because of the Bank’s article of agreement. However, after a series of instances involving corruption across projects and countries, these multi-lateral financial institutions realised that if a country’s inability to pay interest on its loans is due to its leaders siphoning off national earnings into their own bank accounts, surely extending aid or cancelling the debt will merely sanction further grant. The following factors attributed these banks and other donors to formally adopt the ‘good governance’ as a part of their agenda.
The emphasis for project assessment was changed from ‘getting the price right’ to ‘getting the institutions right’. The World Bank believed and claimed that corruption can be battled through the deregulation of the economy, public sector reforms and decentralisation. The Bank defined corruption as “the abuse of public power for private gains”. Generally, the SAPs were prescribed on the following conditions for new loans or for reducing the interest rates on the existing loans:
Reduction of government deficit through cuts in public spending.#p#分页标题#e#
Deregulation through liberalisation of foreign exchange rules and trade
Rationalisation and privatisation of public and parasitic companies
Deregulation of economy.
By 1990s, the World Bank and IMF had become very powerful with SAP being implemented in more than 70 countries. Most of the debtor countries were the Third World countries, who had a very negligible bargaining power against the officials of these financial institutions. With constant need to the external funds for continuing the developmental projects and to service the mounting debts incurred earlier, these countries were under immense threat to implement these painful measures put forward by the bank.
Effects of SAPs: Deregulation and increased participation of the private players have been criticised that the funds have benefited the multinational companies of donor companies more than the benefit of the debtor countries. To meet the tough targets of reducing the fiscal deficits, rapid steps for privatisation of the public sector units were undertaken by the debtor countries and were sold to the multinational companies, belonging primarily to the donor countries. Such acts did not provide enough time to formulate necessary regulations to control the private players. All these steps led to granting implicit license to the multinational companies to operate with high impunity. Such practices of contracting out of the projects and concessions have led to escalation of the cost of the projects due to increased delays and corruption; the price for which is paid by the debtor nations over a longer period of time.
Structural Adjustments in India
From 1980 to 1991, India’s domestic public debt increased steadily from 36% to 56% of GDP, while its external debt rose to $70 billion. International instability in oil prices and downgrading of India’s creditworthiness pushed India to the brink of default in 1991. In June 1991, World Bank supported a comprehensive economic policy reform program with a $500 million Structural Adjustment Operation. The objectives of the SAP were twofold: (i) To help India address its immediate balance of payments crisis and (ii) to support a broad set of policy reforms aided at liberalising the economy. World Bank’s SAP was complemented by an IMF-supported stabilisation program.
With these policy changes, the ubiquitous ‘License Raj’ was slowly and gradually dismantled; trade policy was liberalised and measures were introduced to strengthen capital markets and institutions. Structural Adjustments Program helped India bring down its fiscal deficit to 5.7% of GDP in 1992-1993 from 8.3% in 1990-91. The then Finance Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh said, "The economy is now growing at an annual rate of 5.6 per cent. Industrial production is growing at an annual rate of over 8 per cent. The deficit in the balance of payments on current account is less than one percent. Exports have grown at an impressive rate of nearly 20 per cent in dollar value terms. The employment growth has greatly accelerated since 1991-92." Being a democratic regime, Indian government was not able to implement the Disinvestment plans due to lack of consensus, largely owing to the high unemployment rates prevalent in the country.
Adding teeth to anti-corruption
Lobbying:
Majority of the projects funded by the Bank or the IMF are disbursed locally, however, a large chunk of these projects are awarded directly to the multinationals through international bidding. Most of these multi-nationals are from the donor countries who vie for a significant portion of the projects.
With the increasing clout of the Bank and the IMF over the sanctioning of the projects across geographies, there is a marked increase in the power of the specialised lobbyists, generally formed by a group of former Bank or IMF members. The lobby groups help the multi-national companies win the deals. These lobbyists keep a close track of the happenings around the major projects sanctioned by the financial institutions; help their clients arrange meetings with the officials or try and influence the decision making of the officials. The excessive openness of the World Bank to such lobbying is worrisome as it can undermine the internal processes of these International Financial Institutions.
Blacklisting:
After a series of corruption cases in the World Bank-funded projects came to light, it became imperative for the officials of the Bank to initiate stronger steps towards encouraging anti-corruption measures from all the concerned participants. In 1997, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) framed and signed an International Convention on Combating Bribery in Foreign Public Officials in International Business transactions. In 1998, the World Bank set up sanctions committee to identify companies engaging in corrupt practices in the World Bank funded projects across the globe and debar them for any further participation in the World Bank associated activities. “The World Bank Listing of Ineligible Firms” is regularly updated to keep a track of all the sanctioned companies across the globe. Focus was shifting gradually from bribe-takers to the bribe-givers.
Cross-Debarment:
Multilateral lender Asian Development Bank (ADB) has taken a number of steps to eliminate corruption in its projects. In 2010, OAI received 188 new complaints, and investigations resulted in the debarment of 37 firms and 47 individuals.
In April 2010, ADB, African Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank signed an agreement to mutually enforce each other’s debarment actions on a prospective basis. This is known as cross-debarment. ADB also introduced comprehensive guidelines to protect its staff who report instances of suspected bribery and fraud.
Citation: Detailed Implementation Review - India Health Sector, 2007 (World Bank)
According to Detailed Implementation Review by Integrity Vice Presidency (World Bank), the audit reports found the indicators of corruption listed below:
Lack of Competitive Bidding
Contractor Payment without Acceptance Certificates
Contract Splitting
Possibly Fraudulent Payments to Contractors
Bid Tampering
Possible Misappropriation of Project Funds
Possible Falsified Bids
Competing Firms with Matching Contact Information
Improper Expenditures
Possible Manipulation of Project Accounts
Use of Improper Procurement Methods
Improper Bid Solicitations
Orders Placed Prior to Bidder Selection
Bids Submitted Prior to Solicitation
Insufficient Time to Bid
ANTI–CORRUPTION INITIATIVES: The Indian Context
Below are few initiatives taken by financial institutions in the Indian context:
In June 2005, World Bank put on hold $850 million loan for Reproductive and Child Health Care programme because of alleged nexus between politicians and drug suppliers in procurement.
In March 2006, World Bank stopped financing the $940 million Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) due to anomalies in relocation of dwellers and failure of government to establish an independent monitoring panel.
In 2008, World Bank found corruption in $54-million Food and Drug Capacity Building Project and stopped the funds and the financing started later after certain firms were barred from projects.
Citation: Detailed Implementation Review - India Health Sector, 2007 (World Bank)
According to the Detailed Implementation Review (DIR) 2007 by Integrity Vice Presidency (World Bank), malpractices found in projects are as follows:
National AIDS Control Project (NACP II)
Bogus non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were created to receive contracts; government officials were bribed, also there was no mechanism to track funding of NGOs.
Malpractices such as similar bid prices and affiliated bidders were used in procuring diagnostic test kits and blood bank equipments.
Malaria Control Project (MCP)
Government officials were bribed; contracts for bed nets, pharmaceuticals, insecticides were procured through bogus documents, and similar bid pricing.
Malpractices such as bidders with identical addresses, rotation of contract winners were used in awarding contract through decentralized procurement.
Transparency International: Trucking Operations in India
Transparency International (TI) conducted a field study of the nature of corruption and its extent in the trucking operations in India. This involved interviewing 1222 truck drivers and operators at 12 trucking centres out of 16 major hubs in the country, besides experts, officials and senior executives of leading truck companies and truck operators’ associations.#p#分页标题#e#
According to the study, truckers are required to pay huge bribes at every stage of their operations, be it while getting registration and fitness certificates or for issuance and renewal of interstate and national permits. The reasons attributable to these bribes include plying overloaded trucks, traffic violations, parking at no-parking places or entering in ‘no-entry zone’ and in the payment of toll and other taxes like sales tax, Octroi etc. Other reasons include lack of proper documents, use of alcohol etc.
It is estimated that annually, around INR 79920 are paid by a single truck and the total bribe amount sums up to INR 222bn a year. Shockingly, this practice is highly institutionalized in that the truck drivers get some kind of ‘receipt’ in the form of tokens, stickers etc. to ensure that their operations are hassle-free.
To add to it, about 60% of en-route stoppages are forced by concerned authorities for extorting money and consume more than 11 hours in a day. If these delays are avoided, the number of trips performed by a truck could increase by 40%. Such delays cost the national economy as much as INR 11bn per year.
CRITICISM: Evaluation of Effectiveness of Anti – Corruption Measures
According to a report generated by the Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the International Development Association (IDA), the arm of the World Bank that makes grants and interest-free, long-term loans to poor and developing countries across the globe, lacks the teeth against corruption. At the time of publication of report in May 2009, the aggregate loans and grants to the governments in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, were estimated beyond $10 billion annually. The allegations accused World Bank of not being able to protect its funds adequately from theft and diversion.
Though an eye opener, this report was quite in contrast with the sentiments around that time, with the G20 summit coaxing World Bank to step up its loans amid the economic crisis.
The chief points of allegations were:
The Country Assistance Strategy (the Bank's 3-year business plan for each nation in which it sets priorities)"have not systematically and seriously addressed fraud and corruption risk at the country level."
Project designs don't address the risk of fraud, nor do guidelines for project supervision, financial management or procurement.
Though Bank's lending to bridge the gaps in national budgets requires assessments of fraud and corruption, real safeguards are lacking.
Indian Context
Since 1960, the total loans and grants disbursed by IDA have crossed $193 billion in total. During the Bank’s last fiscal year, Vietnam and India were the two top beneficiaries of its funds. Vietnam borrowed nearly $1.2 billion and India received about $800 million, although both countries had been on radar for high corruption.
The World Bank assessment of India’s health care projects in 2006 deemed five projects significantly vulnerable to fraud and corruption as listed out in Detailed Implementation Review. Similar irregularities were found in the infrastructure projects funded by World Bank in Vietnam. The DIR also found irregularities in the projects' financial management activities and control environment.
A paradox
In the wake of these reports, India's Ministry of Health which was a party to the identified vulnerable corruption still received another $521 million credit, while the Bank's Board of Directors approved an additional $322 million for infrastructure and roads projects in Vietnam. This makes evident the inability on part of the financial management to judge the proactiveness of the projects they invested in.
A wake-up initiative
The report forced the World Bank to react in the following propositions:
First, the recommendations of the Volcker Panel, which reviewed the performance of the Bank's investigative unit in 2007, were implemented. The panel insisted that corruption be addressed systematically and implemented in action rather than talking about the importance of the Act. Second, the Bank's Board approved a whistleblower protection policy in June, 2008.
Finally, implementation of the Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy (GAC) began in January 2008 and has been progressively integrated into lending and projects.
RESTRATEGIZE
The World Bank finally realigned its war against corruption with emphasis on the following areas:
Basic project and lending documents do not include a requirement to assess the risks of fraud and corruption;
Safeguards against corruption do not exist for budget support loans, perhaps the most vulnerable of IDA funds;
Staff members have not been adequately trained to recognize signs of corruption in projects; performance appraisals include incentives to report corruption;
Management routinely fails to take timely actions to follow up on audit, investigatory, and evaluation findings of impropriety.
The Way Forward
The role of the Bank and other multi-lateral institutions is no longer restricted to providing monetary funds, but it is important for them to gain control in the uncharted territories of transparency, monitoring of funds disbursement, implementation of the target objectives and tighter auditing of the results portrayed on the books. It is important that these institutions encourage participation of the debtor countries to tackle these problems of corruption by mobilising resources to educate and enhance anti-corruption agenda. Active involvement of the local public can work wonders to successfully improve the transparency in implementation and reduce corruption to a large extent; on the other hand enforcing anti-corruption strategies by putting conditions on loans can undermine the national efforts against corruption. Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Morcha is an excellent example of active participation of the farmers, which helped India to develop an excellent tool of ‘Right To Information’ Act at national level, which makes the bureaucrats accountable; thereby acting as a strong deterrent to corruption.
CUT OUT DATA
In 2011, a sizable number of nations witnessed public outcry against corruption, impunity and economic instability; sending waves of shock around the world. Protests in many countries quickly spread to unite people from all parts of the society. Be it the uproar in Europe hit by debt crisis or the Arab world starting a new political era, the message from these protests were clear - demanding more transparency and accountability from their leaders. In India, the recent scams of auctioning of 2G licenses in telecom sector and the corrupt practices adopted in hiring of the contractors/consultants in the Common Wealth Games (CWG) instigated the protest of anti-corruption measures to re-surface on wider scale
The 2011 CPI reveals that these protests, arising out of the public frustration, are well founded. Majority of the countries which witnessed such protests ranked pretty low with CPI score of less than 3.0/10. It is interesting to observe that majority of the developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico etc. scored less that 4.5/10.0.
“Money-laundering is the handmaiden of international corruption. Those who take bribes must find safe international financial channels through which they can bank their ill-gotten gains. Those who provide the bribes may well assist the bribe takers to establish safe financial channels and launder the cash”. These words by Frank Vogl, TI; captures the situation prevalent during the 1980s, when because of the debt crisis in the late 1980s onwards, Western banks has fewer opportunities to lend to the Third World countries and started to pursue wealthy high-net worth individuals to place their wealth in their private bank accounts.
Transparency International (TI), an international non-governmental organisation, monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development. Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is one of the tools which ranks countries and territories according to their perceived levels of public sector corruption. CPI combines different sources of information about corruption, making it possible to compare countries across the world. TI’s CPI is credited to have put the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda of many multilateral institutions like World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In India, the recent scams of auctioning of 2G licenses in telecom sector and the corrupt practices adopted in hiring of the contractors/consultants in the Common Wealth Games (CWG) instigated the protest of anti-corruption measures to re-surface on wider scale. Indian Against Corruption(IAC) is one such movement formed to demand reforms to tackle the perennial problem of corruption in India, by putting pressure on the government to implement stronger anti-corruption laws. On the Corruption Perception Index, India scored 3.1/10.0, ranked 95th amongst 183 countries. Such dismal score underlines the public frustration and anger against the government handling of the public funds.#p#分页标题#e#
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