Transparency International-Rwanda Chairperson, Marie Immaculée Ingabire
Transparency International Rwanda (TI-RW) launched the 13th edition of “Rwanda Bribery Index (RBI)”, the annual publication whose aim is to establish experiences and perceptions of this specific form of corruption (bribery) in Rwanda.
In her remarks, TI-RW Chairperson, Marie Immaculée Ingabire, said that, since 2010, “RBI findings have been the benchmark to TI-RW’s advocacy activities geared towards influencing positive systemic change in the fight against corruption & promotion of good governance in Rwanda.”
“We do commend efforts made by the government of Rwanda in the fight against corruption. However, a lot needs to be done. This is why we need to crack on and deliberate over the way forward towards sorting out the existing bottlenecks,” TI-RW Chairperson added.
The Guest of Honor, Hon. Chief Ombudsperson, Nirere Madeleine, underscored that the government of Rwanda has taken sound measures to curb corruption and reiterated Rwanda’s high political will embedded in zero tolerance to corruption policy.
“This is an endless journey. All stakeholders need to harmonize collaboration & make sure we find solutions to existing challenges including the level of reporting which is still low. Therefore, we need innovative strategies in all institutions.” Hon. Nirere Madeleine added.
A quick look at the findings of RBI 2022
According to RBI 2022 findings, 39% of respondents consider the level of corruption to be low in Rwanda while 33.40% and 22.10% perceive that it is medium and high respectively.
As in the previous RBI editions, the majority of Rwandans (70.2% in 202) commend the effectiveness of the government’s efforts in the fight against corruption. However, since the outbreak of Covid-19, the perception of effectiveness has slightly decreased from 81.9% in 2019 to 75.9% in 2020, 71.9% in 2021 and 70.2% in 2022.
As revealed by RBI 2022, over the last 12 months, 29.10% of Rwandans directly or indirectly demanded or offered a bribe in an interaction with an institution. Compared to the previous editions (before Covid-19), this bribe encounter has increased by 10.60% in the last three years – from 18.50% in 2019 (before Covid-19) to 19.20% in 2020, 22.90% in 2021 and 29.10% in 2022.
The survey also indicates that the private sector and traffic police have registered the highest likelihood and prevalence of bribe with 21.20% and 16.40% of likelihood ; and 10.20% and 8.30% of prevalence respectively.
While the national prevalence of bribe stands at 4.50% in 2022 from 2.30% in 2021, 2.50% in 2020 and 2% in 2019, the findings reveal that the prevalence of bribe has particularly kept increasing in the Private Sector (from 4.23% in 2019 to 7% in 2020, 9.78% in 2021 and 10.20% in 2022).
Concerning the likelihood of encountering bribes while seeking services, paying bribe in the local government in order to build a house disallowed by the master plan or preventing DASSO from demolishing a house comes first with highest likelihood (71.40%). The likelihood also stands at 69.50% to get a job in the private sector, speeding the process to get electricity in your home (66.60%), getting a construction permit in the local government (65.80%), while speeding up the WASAC process of getting water in your home (63.60%) comes fourth.
With regard to bribe occurrences among the business community (SDG 16.5.1 and SDG 16.5.2), the study indicates that at least 23.5% of business people were demanded to pay bribe in 2022 and 12.8% of them ended up paying it. Among those who paid, 33.9% of them paid it for business purposes.
The report underpins that a low level of reporting remains to be among the challenges impeding the fight against corruption. The findings reveal that 87.5% did not report corruption cases encountered (from 89.4% in 2021). The main reasons provided were that “it did not occur to me that I should report” (26.5%), Fear of self-incrimination (23.8%), and that they knew no action would be taken even if they reported corruption (18.7%). According to the findings, 44.3% of reported cases did not see any action while 10.1% respondents who reported said they were not satisfied with actions taken.
The report recommends all the line institutions in the fight against corruption to strengthen corruption reporting systems and whistle-blowers’ protection as well as increasing campaigns aiming at raising the public awareness on the negative effects of corruption. It also urges all public and private institutions, at large, to increase transparency and accountability mechanisms by putting in place controls, audits, check and balance mechanisms and an anti-corruption focal person. Rwandan community, CSOs and Media are also recommended to stablish strong monitoring and oversight measures that provide information needed to hold the public sector to account.
Among the topics discussed during the launch of RBI 2022 include the measures taken to ensure Beneficial Ownership Transparency as one of the ways to combat corruption (by identifying hidden properties, fighting tax evasion, money laundering, illicit financial flows, etc).
Moreover, in the light of the discussions, participants also explored together the successes and challenges in prosecution of money laundering related crimes in Rwanda and had insights on the status of asset recovery in Rwanda.
Background
Rwanda Bribery Index (RBI) is an annual publication (since 2010) conducted by Transparency International Rwanda with the aim of analyzing the experience and perception of Rwandans with regard to bribe incidences in the country. RBI seeks to determine the current status of perceived corruption in Rwanda, likelihood and prevalence of corruption and identify Rwandan institutions and organizations particularly vulnerable to corruption. It also assesses the impact of bribery on service delivery in Rwanda and gathers concrete information on the size and share of bribes paid by Rwandan citizens while seeking access to specific services.
RBI 2022 is the 13th edition of its kind and, different from the last two editions (RBI 2020 & RBI 2021) conducted amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2022 edition comes at the time when the Covid-19 cases have substantially decreased due to measures taken including vaccination.
The 2022 survey was conducted in all 4 provinces of Rwanda and City of Kigali in 11 quasi-randomly selected districts with 2,475 respondents as the sample size. 58.8% of the respondents were men while women count 41.2%. 64.1% respondents are rural dwellers while 35.9% live in urban areas. (End)