• Public sector

Public sector & corruption

This document presents the findings of the Governance and Corruption Survey in Malawi, which aimed to ascertain the locus and extent of corruption in the country. The survey also aimed to determine how citizens understand and perceive it and how actual “users” of the system, including businesses, citizens and government officials, have actually experienced it in practice.

Overall, the survey results suggest that users (households and businesses) regard public institutions as delivering generally inferior quality services or alternatively that none of the public institutions listed is performing exemplary public service in Malawi. The performance and the perceived honesty/integrity of institutions are highly correlated. When users deem performance delivery in public institution to be high, they are also most likely to regard the institution as having high integrity and honesty and vice versa.

Political parties and Members of Parliament are seen as being the institutions/personalities with the least integrity or most dishonest. The very poor integrity/honesty rating of political parties and Members of parliament is indicative of the existence of a fairly high incidence and frequency of “Political Corruption” most likely resulting from a malfunctioning political financing regime


The survey makes the following recommendations:

• in fighting corruption not only must the approach be holistic, but it must also be carried and supported by all stakeholders in the society
• the control of flows of money into and out of politics should not be ignored when considering implementation of anti-corruption reform
• the regulatory environment for businesses needs to be made more transparent and information about laws and regulations impacting businesses should be easier to obtain
• anti-corruption efforts must reach beyond state reform and become engrained in the every-day activities of other significant social actors

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend