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Dubai: India topped in bribery rate among the 16 Asia Pacific countries surveyed by Transparency International.

Nearly seven in 10 Indians who had accessed public services had paid a bribe. Contrast this with the least corrupt country – Japan, where only 0.2 per cent of the respondents reported paying a bribe.
The only silver lining is that over a half of the respondents from India were positive about the government’s efforts to combat bribery. Even as the government’s efforts to tackle bribery were appreciated, slightly more than 40% of the respondents viewed that corruption had increased over the past twelve months. Around 63 per cent of the respondents in India also felt that they as individuals had the power to fight corruption.
The Global Corruption Barometer for the Asia Pacific Region was released by Transparency International (TI) – an anti-corruption global civil society organisation, at the stroke of one minute past midnight on March 7, in Berlin.
Approximately 90 crore people, or just over one in four, across 16 countries in Asia Pacific, including some of its biggest economies like India and China, are estimated to have paid a bribe to access public services. For its report – People and Corruption: Asia Pacific, part of the Global Corruption Barometer series, TI spoke to nearly 22,000 people in these countries about their recent experiences with corruption.
India was followed closely by Vietnam where around two thirds (65%) had paid a bribe when accessing public services.
Across the Asia Pacific region, just 22% of the respondents thought that corruption had decreased while 40% of the respondents (41% in India) were of the option that it was on the rise. In mainland China, 73% of the respondents felt that the level of corruption had worsened. This was the highest of any country surveyed.