Bribery costs RP at least P100 million a year – Transparency International

MANILA, Philippines – At least P100 million is being lost to bribery in the Philippines yearly, reinforcing the country’s reputation as one of the world’s most corruption-laden economies, the global corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) said.

The group noted that bribery has reached such alarming proportions that even money for aid for the poor has not been spared, resulting in serious impact on poverty alleviation.

“It steals away the resources intended to alleviate the suffering of the poorest,” TI chairperson Huguette Labelle said at an anti-corruption seminar attended by government representatives and anti-corruption officials from 28 countries and jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific region.

Globally, it is estimated that over $1 trillion is lost to corruption every year.

Since 2005, the Philippines has been ranked among the most corrupt countries alongside Honduras, Nepal, Russia, Rwanda, Benin, Gambia, Guayana and Swaziland.

“Corruption is a scourge that undermines the effectiveness of aid and throws barriers in the way of the political and economic changes that are fundamental to development,” Labelle said in the seminar organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific.

The TI chief suggested that donors extending so-called official development assistance (ODA) to poor countries should look for channels other than corrupt bureaucracies to deliver the resources badly needed for economic development and poverty alleviation.

In a study conducted by TI in the Philippines, it revealed that there was a direct correlation between corruption and the continued deterioration of public health.

“A standard deviation (about 10 percent) increase in corruption reduces the immunization rate by around 10 to 20 percent, increases waiting time in public health clinics as much as 30 percent, decreases user satisfaction by 30 percent, and reduces the odds of completing vaccination by four times and choosing public health facilities by a factor of three,” it stated. –Ted P. Torres (The Philippine Star)