• Private sector

Private sector & corruption

Slovakia is one of a growing number of countries that have sought to tackle the problem of corruption. This paper presents the findings of a survey of perceptions and experiences of households, enterprises and managers with corruption in the country. Drawn from all eight regions of Slovakia, over 350 public officials, 400 enterprise managers, and 1,100 ordinary people have participated in the study.

The survey results show that unofficial payments to government officials are common and that the public views these payments as corruption. Corruption is closely related to the quality of the institutions of public administration. At the same time, corruption hinders the public sector’s delivery of quality services to the citizenry. The main findings of the survey include

• corruption is perceived to be widespread and especially problematic in health, justice, the national property fund, customs, police, and ministries
• corruption is more widespread than ten years ago, but the recent trends are less clear
• all three sample groups identify courts as slow and corrupt
• enterprises identify slowness of courts and low execution of justice as severe problems for doing business
• all the three sample groups perceive the health sector as highly corrupt
• corruption in the educational system is centered mostly around universities
• there is a widespread perception that one cannot gain admittance to law or medical schools without paying bribes
• several regulatory and licensing bodies are frequent recipients of bribes
• most enterprises sponsor political parties. The enterprises believe that it is a common practice, although a larger percentage believe it was common practice before the 1998 elections
• the lack of clear guidelines for the acceptance of gifts leaves officials with no guidance for acceptable behavior
• there is a high degree of acceptance of corruption

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