- Other Issues
- July 30, 2010
- 5 minutes read
Egypt: Business owners forced to pay bribes to avoid close downs
According to a nation-wide survey conducted in mid-2009 by the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies 47% of small and medium businesses are forced to pay government clerks cash bribes in Egypt in order to obtain business licenses and must repeatedly bribe them into avoid fines
“Dr Gamal ‘Abd Al-Gawad, director of the center maintained .”That, the numbers are high and “The steady increase in Egyptian corruption over the past few decades coincides with the emergence of new businesses in Egypt
Manuel Pirino of Transparency International, an international organization combating corruption, described the numbers as alarming, but not surprising stressing that anti-corruption laws are still not sufficiently implemented stressing that “In Egypt, there’s a significant gap between de jure and de facto”
He added that an awkward government system and underlying power struggles between government bureaucrats make it difficult to combat corruption
Sources report that Egypt ‘s official anti-corruption watchdog; The Administrative Control Authority does not possess the authority to investigate corruption charges against certain categories of state employees
The 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International, revealed that Egypt was placed 111th on the worldwide corruption list receiving a low score of 2.8