APEC Anti-Corruption Initiative: Half-Way Home But A Long Way To Go
APEC's recent Public-Private Dialogue on Anti-Corruption and Ensuring Transparency in Business Transactions workshop in Da Nang, Viet Nam, took a closer look at these issues and lessons learned. It is worth reflecting on the results.
The workshop agenda, developed and led by the Government Inspectorate of Viet Nam, was path breaking in that the focus was on both the public and private sector's efforts to reduce the cost of business transactions throughout the region. Panelists from APEC economies provoked new questions and charted progress made to reduce business costs in the region through new anti-corruption legislation, streamlined regulations and novel public-private partnerships.
The results from the World Bank's "Doing Business 2006 Report," highlighted regulatory and administrative trade reform progress in APEC member economies, such as China; Viet Nam; Hong Kong, China; Indonesia; Malaysia; Philippines; and Thailand were discussed. Progress in countries such as Fiji and Timor-L'Este, were also analyzed and debated with much interest.
The report acknowledged that in general, the Asia region continued to lead many global reforms in this area. However, the report also noted that some countries in South Asia continued to lag behind their regional and global neighbors in creating the legal and regulatory environment to promote trade, investment, entrepreneurship and a rule of law culture.
There was general consensus that progress on significant reform had been made in some member economies, particularly on the legislative and regulatory fronts. However, most believed that the main challenges ahead were how to effectively and efficiently implement, build upon and systematically measure progress on these reforms, at both the economy and regional levels. Further, determining how to more closely work with other economies and the private sector on a common reform agenda was also deemed an important challenge.
Other key issues debated by panelists included the need for economies: (i) to forge public-private partnership programs to improve the quality of the information used to measure and report on reform progress, both within economies and across the region; (ii) to pass and implement broader institutional reforms, such as those designed to strengthen judicial independence and integrity and (iii) to pass and implement incentive-based whistle blower laws and policies in order to promote institutional transparency, personal accountability and a culture of integrity. Differences do exist however between the private and public sectors as to exactly when and how officials and employees should disclose corruption when they become aware of it, and how to reward and protect whistle blowers from retaliation.
This divergence of opinion was highlighted by KPMG/Singapore, which argued that disclosure should be strictly voluntary and uncompensated, and new Vietnamese draft legislation that takes more of a mandatory and incentives-based approach. Indeed, Dr. Nguyen Van Thanh, Director of the Vietnam Government Inspectorate Research Institute, called it "every citizen's moral and legal duty and necessary to the development of an anti-corruption, rule of law culture."
In illustrating the need to develop an anti-corruption culture, the presentation by Dr. Troung Phuoc Anh, of the Da Nang Young Entrepreneur's Association, was revealing. To demonstrate his point, which some participants dubbed as "Dr. Troung's Syndrome", he used the formula, E + A+ S = A. This describes the circular story of an entrepreneur's simple administrative request (E) to a low-level bureaucratic official (A), whose arbitrary bureaucratic decision (A) is followed by a supervisory appeal (S) which then sends the problem back to (A) to confirm the initial decision! This deductive example vividly makes the point that civil service reform, including changing "bureaucratic, cultural mindsets," is key to addressing corruption. Many public and private sector participants noted that this story was all too familiar in their economy.
In his closing remarks, Dr. Thanh presented five key challenges for future APEC action. First is the need to develop annual, publicly accessible anti-corruption economy and regional reports that include best practices, lessons learned, model pilot programs and the causes and cost savings of anti-corruption reforms. Second, "black" lists of entrepreneurs found to commit corrupt acts should be made available. Third, there should be timely exchange of information on money laundering. Fourth, more efficient mechanisms to access information related to bilateral and multilateral cooperation between public and private sector actors should be developed. And fifth, there should be more informal exchange of positive reform experiences.
Written by Keith E. Henderson, who made the keynote presentation on the state of the region's anti-corruption efforts from a global perspective. He is the senior anti-corruption advisor to IFES, one of the largest and oldest non-profit organizations working on democracy and governance programs worldwide and an Adjunct Professor of Law at American University's Washington College of Law, where he teaches a course he created entitled: "Global Corruption and the Rule of Law."