Thursday, October 13, 2005

The voice of general public and business people on corruption

What do the general public and the business people in Poland think of corruption?
Kubiak, A. / Stefan Batory Foundation, Warsaw , 2003
What do the general public and the business people in Poland think of corruption? This report describes the findings of a research on corruption conducted in June 2003.

The first part of the research is a public opinion survey, conducted on a random-address sample of 1016 adult Poles. Questions included in the survey referred to corruption-related experiences of survey interviewees. The second part of the research is an individual questionnaire, addressed to private company owners and managers to obtain information on the way corruption is perceived by business people.

Major findings of the research are:

every day personal contacts with healthcare, traffic police and various public administration units are tangible proof for about 20% of adult Poles that they live in a country with high levels of corruption
business people attach greater importance to corruption as a social issue than the total population of Poles do
the majority of business people (66%) are convinced that there is a growing proliferation of corruption in Poland, and almost 30% declare that corruption is becoming more and more of a problem in their business activity
together with delays in payments, business recession, taxation and credit problems, corruption is seen as a major barrier to running a business
based on their personal experience, two thirds of business people believe that there is a special additional tax burden in Poland – the so-called ‘bribe tax’
the items reported most frequently as corruption-prone are customs offices, tenders, public procurement, permits for company expansion and business launch, and getting contracts from other private companies
business people are extremely critical of the offices and employees of regional self-government administration with respect to their involvement in corruption
business people express strong disapproval for corruption and seek its sources in lack of moral standards, in human dishonesty and the wish to have more at any price
the level of strong disapproval for corruption on moral grounds is lower among business people (14%) than in the overall population
on the other hand, though, business people more frequently express lack of acceptance for corruptive practices (38%), side by side with lack of approval for their presence (44%)
In conclusion, business people believe that the best way to curtail corruptive behavior is to reduce the quantity of legal regulations and to make them as precise and explicit as possible.

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