Curb graft to boost growth, reduce poverty

Corruption is perhaps as old as human civilization. But with steadily growing population, accelerating economic activities, and intensification of global inequalities, it has become more commonplace and pervasive. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has said: "Corruption, embezzlement and fraud are all characteristics that exist everywhere! It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not".

The magnitude and extent of global corruption is difficult to estimate because such activities are always covert and invariably done in secret. The World Bank estimates that bribery paid across the world every year exceeds $1 trillion. The World Economic Forum estimates corruption costs now exceed 5 percent of global GDP, a huge sum by any account.

Corruption seriously hinders poverty alleviation in developing countries in Asia. According to the Asian Development Bank, some 320 million people in Asia live in absolute poverty. Close to 30 percent of these poor are from South Asia and about 25 percent are from Southeast Asia. Poverty alleviation can at best be incremental when corruption eats into significant amounts of development funds. Asian countries like China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, which together account for half the world's population, all face pervasive corruption.