World Bank and Indonesian govt to fight corruption

World Bank and Indonesian govt to fight corruption

HONG KONG (AFP): The World Bank is working with the Indonesian
government to forge a strategy to fight corruption in the
country, a Bank official said yesterday.

Jean-Michel Severino, World Bank vice president for East Asia
and the Pacific, said feedback from businesses showed corruption
was becoming an intolerable problem in the country of 200 million
people.

"That is where it seems the problem is perceived as the worst,
and we have engaged the government into a dialogue on this
issue," Severino told the Foreign Correspondents Club here.

Corruption figured prominently in the World Bank's
consultations with Jakarta, with donor governments raising the
issue and calling for progress, the official said.

Severino said there was a growing perception in Indonesian
government that "image or real practices of corruption are
becoming an impediment to investment and they would like very
much to do something about it.

He said he was "pretty confident that we are going to develop
actions with them."

But the official cautioned that it could take time to identify
"what exactly has to be done because it is much easier to talk
about corruption than do something about it."

The Development Committee of the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank, whose purpose is to discuss transferring
wealth from the rich to the poorest countries, on Monday agreed
that the fight against corruption was key to reducing poverty.

Severino said one of the difficulties in fighting corruption
was that it involved a reliance on "perception" in the absence of
"objective information."

"We have to rely much more perceptions and act .. without
knowing exactly the reality," he said.

But when it does become clear that corruption was a major
impediment to growth in any country, the Bank would take action,
he said.

"In the case of East Asia, we have had kind of a general
feeling that corruption was widely spread but at the same time
(there were) very high growth rates.

"And then it was very difficult to go to the governments and
tell them corruption was a major problem for growth. They said
'no, what countries in the world are growing faster than we
are?'"

It would be "difficult" in the case of East Asian countries to
make a direct link between growth and corruption," he said.

But when the private sector sends the message in a "consistent
way, then we can really build on that" and take it up with a
government, Severino said.

Some countries have expressed fears that including the fight
against corruption on the global agenda would be used as an
excuse for interference in their domestic affairs, but Severino
said many governments felt otherwise.

"They know that corruption is harming the poor in their
country and that it is a problem in their own development. Many
governments would like to make progress in tackling corruption,"
he said.

Severino ruled out a connection between corruption and
democracy or lack of it, noting that bribery had been widely
spread "in very open governments." He gave no examples.

Corruption was becoming "morally and economically
unacceptable," adding that the World Bank would join forces with
other international organizations to fight the problem.

Contractors who bid for World Bank projects would have to
pledge to shun corruption and whose violate the pledge would be
blacklisted while the bank tries to stamp out corruption within
its own organization.