A recent World Bank Symposium on Data Analytics for Anticorruption in Public Administration has tagged corruption as a major challenge to the Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the poorest 40 per cent of people living in developing countries.
The post-forum World Bank feature article titled “Combatting Corruption” cites several ways in which corruption impacts disproportionately on the poor and most vulnerable including the role it plays in “increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice.” From the standpoint of the impact of corruption on specific aspects of the well-being of vulnerable groups in society, the report cites “corruption in the procurement of drugs and medical equipment,” which it says not only “drives up costs,” but can also lead to vulnerable groups having to rely on sub-standard and even harmful products. “The human costs of counterfeit drugs and vaccinations on health outcomes and the life-long impacts on children far exceed the financial costs. Unofficial payments for services can have a particularly pernicious effect on poor people,” the report adds.
The article, meanwhile, targets what it says are corrupt practices at the level of government designed to “unfairly determine the winners of government contracts, with awards favouring friends, relatives, or business associates of government officials” as well as those that “might come in the form of state capture, distorting how institutions work and who controls them.” This, it says is a form of corruption which “is often the costliest in terms of overall economic impact.”
The Bank says, meanwhile, that empirical studies show that the poor usually pay the highest percentage of their incomes in bribes, they being a target for corruption-driven shakedowns arising from the fact that they are seen as powerless to complain. “Every stolen or misdirected dollar, euro, peso, yuan, rupee, or ruble, robs the poor of an equal opportunity in life and prevents governments from investing in their human capital,” the Bank contends.
And according to the World Bank, “corruption comes in different forms. It might impact service delivery, such as when an official asks for bribes to perform routine services. Corruption might unfairly determine the winners of government contracts, with awards favouring friends, relatives, or business associates of government officials. Or it might come in the form of state capture, distorting how institutions work and who controls them, a form of corruption that is often the costliest in terms of overall economic impact. Each type of corruption is important and tackling all of them is critical to achieving progress and sustainable change.”
“Making inroads against corruption often requires determined efforts to overcome vested interests. Transparency and open governance are typically part of the story, but rarely the whole story. When popular disaffection with corruption and cronyism reaches a boiling point, the political rewards to addressing corruption can exceed the costs of upsetting interests. Short of sweeping reform efforts, progress can be achieved through better and more open processes, professional accountability systems, and the use of the latest advanced technologies to capture, analyze, and share data to prevent, detect, and deter corrupt behavior,” the assessment of the forum adds.
