Tbilisi, 9 July, 2013 – Only 4% of Georgians stated that they had paid a bribe in the past 12 months, Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer survey, released today, finds. Around the world, more than one out of four people (27%) said that they had paid a bribe in the previous 12 months. Georgia is among the countries with the lowest rate of people who said they paid a bribe among the 107 countries in which the survey was carried out.

However, corruption remains a concern of many Georgians: When asked in September 2012 which institutions they perceived as most affected by corruption, 51% of respondents described the judiciary as extremely or very corrupt. Other sectors perceived as extremely or very corrupt were the media (42%), Parliament (34%) and health care providers (33%). The institutions perceived as least corrupt were religious organisations (81% saying it was not corrupt at all or had very little corruption), the military (73%) and non-governmental organizations (71%).  

“The results underline that there is a strong need for a continuing reform of the judiciary, which has been started in recent months. But we also need extend reforms to the prosecutor’s office, which remains a very powerful body that often appears to be highly politicised rather than being a body that is truly independent from the government, so that citizens develop a strong trust in the independence and fairness of law enforcement and the court system”, says Eka Gigauri, TI Georgia’s Executive Director.  

The survey also highlights that in Georgia, nepotism in the public sector remains a concern: Asked about the role of personal contacts to get things done in dealings with government agencies, 38% of respondents stated that contacts were important, 15% said they were very important (28% stated that contacts were of no or little importance).

Asked if they would report an incident of corruption, 63% of Georgian respondents said they would file a complaint. Of those, 49% said they would report it to a government hotline (which does not exist in Georgia). A large share of respondents who said they would not report corruption stated that it would not make any difference (46%); more than a quarter said they didn’t know where to report and 21% of respondents said they were afraid of consequences.

In Georgia, the surveying was carried out by the Institute for Polling & Marketing (IPM) for Transparency International, which interviewed 1,000 Georgians face to face across the country (except Abkhazia and South Ossetia) in September 2012. The Global Corruption Barometer, carried out by the Secretariat of Transparency International in Berlin, is the only worldwide public opinion survey on views and experiences of corruption. The 2013 Global Corruption Barometer reflects the responses of 114,270 people in 107 countries.