Bribes remain rampant: TI

Despite facing a rampant graft problem that has seen Cambodians paying bribes far more often than their regional neighbors, they have growing faith in the government’s ability to fight it, a Transparency International survey has found.

TI’s 2013 Global Corruption Barometer, which measures perceptions of corruption in 107 countries, found that half the 1,000 Cambodians surveyed in the past year thought corruption in Cambodia was decreasing, and only a quarter thought it was increasing.

In 2011, by contrast, only 30 per cent of Cambodian interviewees thought corruption was decreasing and 43 per cent believed it to be worsening, Preap Kol, executive director for TI Cambodia, said at yesterday’s press conference on the survey. ...

Fifty seven percent of Cambodian respondents said they or someone in their household had paid a bribe in the past year, a proportion significantly higher than the 36 percent or less reported in each of the other five Southeast Asian countries surveyed — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. …

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/bribes-remain-rampant-survey