Results for government contracts

Corruption exists in all sectors and its impacts are universally negative, but corruption in public infrastructure is particularly nefarious for low-income countries. Estimates of losses to bribery in construction, which lies downstream from procurement, are as high as 45 percent of construction costs. In some situations, misconduct may not even be considered particularly harmful or wrong by the participants – as illustrated by the oft used term for corruption: the price of doing business. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum; corruption is enabled by the conventions and approaches that have been allowed to develop over time. By Ian Hawkesworth