Indicator 16.5.2 Proportion of businesses that had at least one contact with a public official and that paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials during the previous 12 months

Indicator 16.5.2: Proportion of businesses that had at least one contact with a public official and that paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials during the previous 12 months

Target 16.5: Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms

World Bank (WB)

Definition:

The percent of firms experiencing at least one bribe payment request across 6 public transactions dealing with utilities access, permits, licenses, and taxes.

In every Enterprise Survey (www.enterprisesurveys.org), there are standard questions which ask the survey respondent if they were expected to give a gift or informal payment during a transaction with a public official. There are six, separate transactions which make up this indicator, they include an application for an electrical connection, an application for a water connection, an application for a construction-related permit, an application for an import license, an application for an operating license, and during an inspection/meeting with tax officials. In all of these transactions, if the respondent indicates ‘yes’ they had the transaction (e.g. they applied for an import license), then there is a follow-up question which asks if the respondent was expected to provide a gift or an informal payment during this transaction (an application or meeting). The response options include “yes”, “no”, “don’t know”,and “refuse”. Note that refusals are accepted and recorded but for the purposes of indicator construction, refusals are considered as a ‘yes’. The indicator 16.5.2 is measuring whether the respondent indicated ‘yes’ to a bribe payment for any of these six transactions.

Enterprise Surveys are firm-level surveys conducted in World Bank client countries. The survey focuses on various aspects of the business environment as well as firm’s outcome measures such as annual sales, productivity, etc. The surveys are conducted via face-to-face interviews with the top manager or business owner. For each country, the survey is conducted approximately every 4-5 years.

Concepts:

The respondents to the Enterprise Survey are firms- either manufacturing or services establishments. These are registered (formal) firms with 5+ employees. The firms are either fully or partially private (100% state-owned firms are ineligible for the Enterprise Survey). More information on the survey methodology can be found on the Methodology page of the website: www.enterprisesurveys.org/methodology

A gift or an informal payment is considered a ‘bribe’.

Percent (%) of firms experiencing at least one bribe payment request

The website for Enterprise Surveys (www.enterprisesurveys.org) provides all metadata, including survey questionnaires and implementation reports for all Enterprise Surveys. The implementation reports indicate the sample size, sample frame used, dates/duration of fieldwork, the response rates, etc.

Registration to the Enterprise Survey’s website is free and the website’s data portal allows users to access the raw data and survey documentation for each survey.

The indicator is derived from Enterprise Surveys which are conducted by the World Bank. The World Bank usually hires a private contractor (typically a market research company) to conduct the survey fieldwork.

The key strength of the Enterprise Survey is that most of the questions in the survey pertain to the actual, day-to-day experiences of the firm; these questions regarding corruption are not opinion-based question but rather are grounded in the firm’s day-to-day reality.

The limitations include that some countries’ data is almost 10 years old (e.g. Burkina Faso and Brazil). This is due to the fact that these face-to-face survey projects can be expensive in some countries and hence due to budget limitations, the World Bank hasn’t been able to update some of the Enterprise Surveys data in a subset of countries. Another limitation is that the surveys are done mostly in World Bank client countries and hence several high-income countries are not covered by the surveys (US, Canada, UK, Singapore, Japan, GCC countries, etc.).

Another limitation may be the sensitive nature of corruption. In some countries/cultures, firms may not be comfortable answering questions on corruption. Although the data is collected under the context of confidentiality, firms may refuse to answer the question if they have been subject to bribery solicitations. Hence, in some countries, the actual incidence of this particular type of corruption may be higher than the calculated indicator value.

The indicator is calculated for each country, by looking at the proportion of firms which answered ‘yes’ to the survey questions. For all Enterprise Survey projects conducted since 2006, the resulting dataset has sampling weights. Hence the indicator value, which is computed using Stata, incorporates these sampling weights as well as the design strata.

2023-03-31

World Bank (WB)

16.5.1: Proportion of persons who had at least one contact with a public official and who paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials, during the previous 12 months

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