Although, WTO does provide well-organised trade laws and systems for international trading, there are still not fully functioned in those developing and under-developed countries. One of the main reasons is bribery, which is a very serious issue and very difficult to solve at this moment. The Transparency International have released the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2010 the global ranking of corruption by country. It’s organised in the below handy map, with the darker red countries being more corrupt and the yellow countries being least corrupt. Denmark, Singapore and New Zealand were the least corruption countries[1].
In some under-developed countries in Asia, the salary, benefits and perks of their government employees are considered not so attractive if you compare it to developed countries. Some businessmen are willing to bribe those government employees in order to get some advantages and more competiveness in their own business, especially those local businessmen. For instance, commodity products, such as steels, normally are strictly protected by international trade laws in doing export and imports, high taxes have to be paid to government. However, most of the domestic businessmen they would bribe some authorities who are working in import and export departments in order to reduce or avoid those taxes. On the other hand, for foreign investors, most of them are considered as a tycoon company, in their own countries, bribery might not work or strictly prohibited, so it’s very harsh for them to do that kind of bribery and also it is too risky for them. Moreover, as I mentioned above, in developed countries, normally government authorities are having well-paid and fabulous side benefits, they are well educated and having good moral or ethic, it might be impossible to negotiate with them about under table deals. Therefore, international trade laws are not working well in most of the Asian countries, it prevent foreign investors getting into their market or even make those existing foreign investors withdraw their investment from Asian countries due to it is hard to compete with those companies which having “close” relationship with government authorities.
Most of the Asian countries are trying their best to attract foreign investment to their countries, they launch some free taxes trading zone or launch some business alliance with foreign companies with domestic companies, for example, Japanese tycoon car maker, Mitsubishi is co-operative with Malaysia local car maker, called Perodua, to share their part technology to produce better cars. In spite of paying some good effort to promote their own countries, the affection of briberies still remained as stagnant to them. It is very sad to disclose this kind of information about Asian countries but on the other hand, it is a fact, the reality.
Most of the Asian countries are trying their best to attract foreign investment to their countries, they launch some free taxes trading zone or launch some business alliance with foreign companies with domestic companies, for example, Japanese tycoon car maker, Mitsubishi is co-operative with Malaysia local car maker, called Perodua, to share their part technology to produce better cars. In spite of paying some good effort to promote their own countries, the affection of briberies still remained as stagnant to them. It is very sad to disclose this kind of information about Asian countries but on the other hand, it is a fact, the reality.
[1] Transparency International ‘Corruption perception Index 2010 results’ http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results
