Indian Firms Rank 19th as Global Bribe Payers

Bangalore: India ranks 19th when it comes to paying bribes abroad, a survey on Bribe Payers by Transparency International stated. Bribing public officials when doing business is very common thing and a regular occurrence. The Transparency International's 2011 Bribe Payers Index, ranks 28 leading international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad. The compilation of the survey concludes that major bribing was done in three types: bribing high profile politicians, bribing low level public officials and use of personal and familiar relationships on public contracting. The ranking was done in the scale of 0-10 where 0 corresponds to countries that are high in bribing and 10 correspond to the countries that were least in bribing. India ranks 19th with a score of 7.5. Indian companies were scaled in the index for bribing low-level public officials in abroad to "speed things up'' which has a higher result than bribing political parties or using personal relationships to get things done. Practicing bribing on high scales were the public works and construction companies who were measured as most corrupt- prone. Companies from Netherlands and Switzerland were rated least when it came bribing in abroad. Bagging rank 1 and 2 were Russia and China followed by Mexico. Companies from Russia and China, which invested $120 billion overseas in 2010, are seen as most likely to pay bribes abroad.