#Melhor controlo colocaria Portugal aonível da Finlândia [completo]
Corrupção 2005-08-29 21:35 DE com Lusa
Um director do Banco Mundial (BM) defende que um melhor controlo da
corrupção em Portugal colocaria o país ao nível da Finlândia em termos de
desenvolvimento, em artigo divulgado hoje pelo Fundo Monetário
Internacional (FMI).
Daniel Kaufmann defende esta tese em texto publicado na revista trimestral
do FMI, Finança & Desenvolvimento, divulgado no endereço electrónico da
instituição.
O objectivo do artigo é refutar o que diz serem 10 mitos sobre governância
e corrupção.
A primeira das ideias consideradas erradas identifica governação e
anti-corrupção.
Ora, precisa, governância define-se "como as tradições e instituições
através das quais a autoridade é exercida num país para o bem comum".
Isto inclui a forma como as autoridades são seleccionadas, monitorizadas e
substituídas, a capacidade do governo gerir efectivamente os recursos e
realizar políticas sólidas, e o respeito pelos cidadãos e pelo Estado das
instituições do país.
Já corrupção é definida como "o abuso de cargo público pelos ganhos
privados".
Daniel Kaufmann rejeita da mesma forma a ideia de que a governância e a
corrupção não podem ser medidas.
Ao contrário, adianta, têm-se dados passos importantes, designadamente no
Banco Mundial, que já levaram à constituição de uma bateria de 350 varáveis
que cobrem 200 países.
É com base nestes indicadores que ataca um terceiro mito, o de que a
importância da governância e dos esforços anti-corrupção estão
sobrevalorizados.
"A pesquisa mostra que em geral os países podem extrair um muito grande
'dividendo de desenvolvimento' da melhoria da governância", indica
Kaufmann.
O economista do Banco Mundial adianta que "um país que melhore a sua
governância de um relativo baixo nível para um nível médio quase que pode
triplicar o rendimento 'per capita' da população no longo prazo, tal como
reduzir a mortalidade infantil e a iliteracia".
Os cálculos efectuados permitem-lhe exemplificar com a Guiné Equatorial,
que subiria para o nível do Uganda, com a progressão deste para o estatuto
da
Lituânia e com a evolução desta para a classificação de Portugal.
No caso da situação portuguesa, os ganhos decorrentes da melhoria estimada
da governância colocariam o desenvolvimento do País ao nível do da
Finlândia.
Kaufmann entende que a situação actual desaconselha que se continue com a
atitude dominante, de secundarização, no que respeita à governância e
corrupção.
O mesmo responsável defende uma abordagem internacional mais forte do tema,
o que requer uma responsabilidade colectiva ao nível global.
Em particular, diz, "o mundo rico deve liderar pelo exemplo", aconselhando
a ratificação e concretização da convenção das Nações Unidas contra a
corrupção, aprovada em 2003, por parte de todos os Estados-membros da
Organização para a Cooperação e o Desenvolvimento Económico.
-------------------------------------------------------
A tabela detalhada internacional está em:
http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2001/cpi2001.html
-------------------------------------------------------
O artigo de base:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/09/basics.htm
September 2005, Volume 42, Number 3
Back to Basics?10 Myths About Governance and Corruption
Daniel Kaufmann
Governance?which remains a sensitive and misunderstood topic?is now being
given a higher priority in development circles. A few donors and
international financial institutions (IFIs) have begun to work with some
emerging economies to help reduce corruption, and encourage citizen voice,
gender equality, and accountability. When the Group of Eight countries
announced in July their decision to double aid and debt relief to the
poorest countries in Africa, governance concerns were prominent. And in
May, the joint report by the Africa Commission explicitly stated: "Good
governance is the key... Unless there are improvements in capacity,
accountability, and reducing corruption... other reforms will have only
limited impact."
But is good governance and controlling corruption really so fundamental for
development? The explosion of empirical research over the past decade,
coupled with lessons from countries? own experience, have given us a more
solid basis for judging the effect of governance on development, and the
effectiveness?or lack thereof?of strategies to improve it. Yet there are
still unresolved questions and debates in the development community, not
only about the importance of governance, but also about the ability of IFIs
to help countries improve on it. Let us therefore go back to basics and
address some prevailing "myths" about governance and corruption.
Myth #1: Governance and anticorruption are one and the same. We define
governance as the traditions and institutions by which authority in a
country is exercised for the common good. This includes the process by
which those in authority are selected, monitored, and replaced (the
political dimension); the government?s capacity to effectively manage its
resources and implement sound policies (the economic dimension); and the
respect of citizens and the state for the country?s institutions (the
institutional respect dimension). By contrast, corruption is defined more
narrowly as the "abuse of public office for private gain."
Myth #2: Governance and corruption cannot be measured. It is true that less
than a dozen years ago virtually no internationally comparable measures of
governance or corruption existed. But in recent years, the World Bank and
others have sought to remedy this. At the World Bank, we have constructed
aggregate governance indicators that cover more than 200 countries, based
on more than 350 variables obtained from dozens of institutions worldwide.
Our indicators cover the following six dimensions of governance: voice and
accountability; political stability and the absence of major violence and
terror; government effectiveness; regulatory quality; rule of law; and
control of corruption.
While the indicators represent a big step forward, there are measurement
challenges. Margins of error are not trivial, and caution in interpreting
the results is warranted?one should not precisely rank countries. But these
margins of error have declined, and are now substantially lower than for
any individual measure of corruption, governance, or the investment
climate. As a result, the World Bank?s governance indicators are used
worldwide for monitoring performance, for country assessments, and for
research.
Myth #3: The importance of governance and anti-corruption is overrated.
Thanks to these and other advances in empirical measurement, a number of
researchers have examined the impact of governance on development. The
research generally shows that countries can derive a very large
"development dividend" from better governance. We estimate that a country
that improves its governance from a relatively low level to an average
level could almost triple the income per capita of its population in the
long term, and similarly reduce infant mortality and illiteracy. Such a
relative improvement (by one standard deviation) would correspond, for
instance, to a move up in our ranking for the "control of corruption"
dimension in our database, taking Equatorial Guinea to the level of Uganda,
Uganda to Lithuania, Lithuania to Portugal, and Portugal to Finland.
Governance also matters for a country?s competitiveness and for income
distribution. In the case of corruption, research suggests it is equivalent
to a major tax on foreign investors. In many developing countries,
corruption represents a "regressive tax" on the household sector as well:
lower income families pay a disproportionate share of their incomes in
bribes to have access to public services (compared with higher income
groups), and often end up with less access to such services because of
corruption. A rough estimate of the extent of annual worldwide transactions
that are tainted by corruption puts it close to $1 trillion.
To make matters worse, aid-funded projects tend to fail in corrupt
settings. And corruption undermines fledgling democracies. Of course,
governance is not the only thing that matters for development.
Macroeconomic, trade, and sectoral policies are also important. But when
governance is poor, policymaking in other areas is also compromised.
Myth #4: Governance is a luxury that only rich countries can afford. Some
claim that the link between governance and incomes does not mean that
better governance boosts incomes, but the reverse?higher incomes
automatically translate into better governance. However, our research does
not support this claim. It is thus misleading to suggest that corruption is
due to low incomes, and invent a rationale for discounting bad governance
in poor countries. In fact, the evidence points to the causality being in
the direction of better governance leading to higher economic growth. A
number of emerging economies, including the Baltics, Botswana, Chile, and
Slovenia, have shown that it is possible to reach high standards of
governance without yet having joined the ranks of wealthy nations.
Myth #5: It takes generations for governance to improve. While it is true
that institutions often change only gradually, in some countries there has
been a sharp improvement in the short term. This defies the view that while
governance may deteriorate quickly, improvements are always slow and
incremental. For instance, there has been a significant improvement since
1996 in the "voice and accountability" indicator in countries ranging from
Bosnia, Croatia, and Ghana, to Indonesia, Serbia, and Sierra Leone. And the
improvements exhibited by some African countries in a short period of time
challenge the "Afro-pessimists." Even so, it is sobering that, on average,
there has not been a worldwide improvement in overall governance during
this period?and in a number of countries, including the Ivory Coast, Nepal,
and Zimbabwe, there has been a sharp deterioration.
Myth #6: Donors can "ringfence" projects in highly corrupt countries and
sectors. With the possible exception of some humanitarian aid projects, the
notion that the aid community can insulate projects from an overall corrupt
environment in a country is not borne out by the evidence. The data suggest
that when a systemic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law,
and control of corruption is absent, the likelihood of an aid-funded
project being successful is greatly reduced.
Myth #7: Fight corruption by fighting corruption. A fallacy promoted by
some in the field of anticorruption, and at times also by the international
community, is that one "fights corruption by fighting corruption"?through
yet another anticorruption campaign, the creation of more "commissions" and
ethics agencies, and the incessant drafting of new laws, decrees, and codes
of conduct. Overall, such initiatives appear to have little impact, and are
often politically expedient ways of reacting to pressures to do something
about corruption, substituting for the need for fundamental and systemic
governance reforms.
Myth # 8: The culprit is the public sector in developing countries. A
common fallacy is to focus solely on the failings of the public sector. The
reality is much more complex, since powerful private interests often exert
undue influence in shaping public policy, institutions, and state
legislation. In extreme cases, "oligarchs" capture state institutions. And
many multinational corporations still bribe abroad, undermining public
governance in emerging economies. There are also weaknesses in the
nongovernmental sector. Further, traditional public sector management
interventions have not worked because they have focused on technocratic
"fixes," often done through technical assistance importing hardware,
organizational templates, and experts from rich countries.
Myth #9: There is little countries can do to improve governance. Given the
long list of interventions that have not worked, as well as the role often
ascribed to historical and cultural factors in explaining governance, it is
easy to fall into the pessimist camp. That would be a mistake. First,
historical and cultural factors are far from deterministic?witness, for
instance, the diverging paths in terms of governance of neighboring
countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America, the Korean peninsula, the
transition economies of Eastern Europe, and in Southern Africa. Second,
there are strategies that offer particular promise. The coupling of
progress on improving voice and participation?including through freedom of
expression and women?s rights?with transparency reforms (see box) can be
particularly effective.
Toward a transparency reform scorecard
The data suggest that transparency helps improve governance and reduce
corruption?essential ingredients for better development and faster economic
growth. But there is a need for the development aid community to pay more
attention to the issue. For that reason, at the World Bank Institute we
have begun to construct an index to help make transparency more
transparent. Further, in terms of reforms, a basic checklist, which
countries may use for self-assessment, includes:
public disclosure of assets and incomes of candidates running for public
office, public officials, politicians, legislators, judges, and their
dependents;
public disclosure of political campaign contributions by individuals and
firms, and of campaign expenditures;
public disclosure of all parliamentary votes, draft legislation, and
parliamentary debates;
effective implementation of conflict of interest laws, separating business,
politics, legislation, and public service, and adoption of a law governing
lobbying;
publicly blacklisting firms that have been shown to bribe in public
procurement (as done by the World Bank); and "publish-what-you-pay" by
multinationals working in extractive industries;
effective implementation of freedom of information laws, with easy access
for all to government information;
freedom of the media (including the Internet);
fiscal and public financial transparency of central and local budgets,
adoption of the IMF?s Reports on Standards and Codes framework for fiscal
transparency, detailed government reporting of payments from multinationals
in extractive industries, and open meetings involving the country?s
citizens;
disclosure of actual ownership structure and financial status of domestic
banks;
transparent (web-based) competitive procurement;
country governance and anticorruption diagnostics and public expenditure
tracking surveys (such as those supported by the World Bank); and
transparency programs at the city (and subnational) levels, including
budgetary disclosure and open meetings.
Myth #10: There is not much the IFIs can do. Some development experts are
skeptical about the ability of IFIs and donors to help countries improve
their governance?either because of a conviction that "the ?macro? matters
more," a mistaken belief in historical "determinism," or a view that the
interventions needed to improve governance are politically sensitive and
thus difficult for outsiders to encourage. Surely, there are areas that
fall outside the mandate of IFIs, such as promotion of fair multiparty
elections. But initiatives to encourage transparency, freedom of
information and an independent media, participatory anticorruption programs
led by the country, and gender equality?all of which have been
underemphasized so far in the fight against corruption?may well be within
the ability of IFIs and donors to do something about. Such initiatives,
complemented by supporting targeted reform of highly vulnerable
institutions (which often include procurement, tax, customs, or the
judiciary) offer much promise.
* * * * *
The challenge of governance and anticorruption confronting the world today
strongly argues against the "business-as-usual" modus operandi. A bolder
approach is needed, and collective responsibility at the global level is
called for. The rich world must not only deliver on its aid and trade
liberalization promises, it must also lead by example. OECD countries
should ratify and effectively implement the 2003 UN convention against
corruption, and take steps (as Switzerland is starting to do) to repatriate
assets looted and stashed abroad by corrupt officials. And transnational
corporations should refrain from bribery and support improving governance
practices in host countries. As for the IFIs and donors, there is a need to
grapple with questions of selectivity and effectiveness in aid programs,
anchoring aid decisions within a governance prism and helping countries
build capacity to effectively absorb aid. Improving transparency will be
key. Finally, countries themselves must take the lead in improving
governance.