India has slipped to 82nd position in 2021, five places down from 77th rank last year, in a global list that measures business bribery risks.
The list by TRACE, an anti-bribery standard setting organisation, measures business bribery risk in 194 countries, territories, and autonomous and semi-autonomous regions.
According to this year’s data, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Eritrea pose the highest commercial bribery risk, while Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and New Zealand present the lowest.
This score is based on four factors — the nature and extent of government interaction with the private sector, societal attitudes toward bribery and the government’s ability to enforce anti-bribery laws, government and civil service transparency, and civil society’s ability to monitor and expose corruption. The fourth paradigm includes the role of the media.
The report further established that all of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries saw increases in commercial bribery risk from 2020 to 2021. Over the past decade, the business bribery risk environment worsened significantly in countries that also experienced democratic backsliding — Egypt, Venezuela, Turkey, Poland and Hungary.
The TRACE Bribery Risk Matrix was originally published in 2014 to meet a need in the business community for more reliable and nuanced information about the risks of commercial bribery worldwide. It aggregates relevant data obtained from leading public interest and international organisations, including the United Nations, World Bank, V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg and World Economic Forum.
