Georgia in ‘Global Corruption Barometer’ Report

Most of the Georgian citizens rank the judiciary as the most corrupt institution in the country, while most of them assess positively the government’s efforts to reduce corruption, according to the Global Corruption Barometer, released by the Berlin-based Transparency International on June 3.

Global Corruption Barometer is compiled based on face-to-face interviews with over 73,000 respondents in 69 countries to identify their perception of corruption in their respective countries.

In Georgia the survey was conducted by Gallup International’s partner, GORBI, under the guidance of Transparency International. The field work with 1,400 Georgian citizens was conducted between January 29-February 9, 2009, according to the Transparency International-Georgia.

Like in previous similar surveys held in 2005 and 2007, the judiciary again topped the list of least trusted institutions with only 14% of respondents saying there is no corruption in the judiciary and 37% say it is vastly corrupt, according to the report.

Other institutions were ranked as follows: civil service – seen as vastly corrupt by 21% of the respondents; parliament – 16%; political parties – 12%; private sector – 9%; media – 6%.

Government’s actions were assessed either very or somewhat effective by 57% of respondents, ranking in this respect third after the Netherlands and Macedonia among European and Central Asian countries, according to the survey. The same figure stood at 45% in 2007.

According to the survey only 2% of respondents report having had to pay a bribe and 37% confirm their readiness to pay a premium to support transparent and ethical business practices.

The report, however, also says that to all the questions “a fairly significant number” of surveyed persons responded with either “don’t know” or “no answer” to all the question, topping the list in the region in terms of the frequency of these two answers.

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