Ikhwanweb :: The Muslim Brotherhood Official English Website

Egypt: Business owners forced to pay bribes to avoid close downs

The report alluded to the sharp deterioration in government salaries in addition to the extreme lack of oversight as being responsible for the escalating rate of corruption in the country. Business-owners went as far as paying for permits they did not need

Facebook Digg Yahoo Del.icio.us reddit StumbleUpon Mixx Google

 

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