Korea and bribe

B

An index measuring the world’s most active bribe-payers ranked South Korean companies 21st of the 30 states surveyed.

According to Transparency International (TI)’s Bribes Payers Index (BPI) for this year, Korean businesses scored 5.8 out of 10 points to finish 21st on the list.

The index ranks countries by the degree to which their companies are perceived to be paying bribes. The scale is from 0 to 10, where 0 represents a very high level of bribery and 10 is transparency.

Companies in Switzerland topped the list with 7.81 points to be ranked as the least likely to pay bribes, while companies in India, which finished last with 4.62 points, were fingered as the most active bribe-payers.

Sweden, Australia, Austria, and Canada rounded out the top five in that order, with scores of between 7.46 and 7.62 points.

Countries such as the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium also had scores higher than seven points. Taiwan, Turkey, Russia and China joined India as the only countries to score below 6 points.

Korean companies finishing 10th-worst among 30 countries is an improvement from the past, as they finished 18th among 19 countries in the same index in 1999 and 18th among 21 countries in 2002.

Keep up the good job, Korea!!

However, the BPI index this year categorizes Korean companies in the ``third-group,’’ the worst offenders among the businesses in surveyed countries.




10-04-2006korea times