29% of businesses paid bribes for pandemic support: survey

Twenty-nine percent of businesses say they paid bribes in order to receive the assistance the government provided to overcome the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings provided in the fifth edition of the ‘COVID-19 and Business Confidence in Bangladesh’ quarterly survey on the effects of the pandemic on business by private research institution South Asian Network on Economic Modelling, or SANEM.

SANEM Executive Director Dr Selim Raihan announced the findings of the report through a virtual event on Saturday. The event was organised with support from The Asia Foundation.

Raihan did not provide additional details regarding which banks or other parties had demanded the bribes in exchange for the assistance.

In response to a question, Raihan said the survey had only asked a yes or no question on whether bribes had been paid, but did not ask for details.

The fifth edition of the survey collected findings from 501 small, medium and large companies in the manufacturing and service sectors from 37 districts in eight divisions across the country, he said.

“Of the businesses covered in the survey, 29 percent reported they had been asked for bribes. Another 47 percent did not say yes or no. This silence suggests a large section of this 47 percent was likely also asked for bribes”

These participants likely did not answer yes or no due to worries or fears about getting into trouble, he said.

Twenty-four percent of participants in the survey stated they had not paid any bribes.

Most of those who reported having to pay bribes were from small to medium-sized businesses, said Raihan, a professor of economics at Dhaka University.

Of the 501 participants in the survey, 42 percent were medium-sized businesses, while 35 percent were small-scale entrepreneurs, he said.

Of the participants, only 21 percent had received the incentive loan assistance as of July, while 79 percent had not.

Another finding of the survey was that 64 percent of industrial businesses described the state of business, commerce investment and economic recovery in Bangladesh amidst the pandemic as vulnerable.

The SANEM report states that until April, according to six indicators including factory production, production costs, employment and sales, business had improved since the past year, but 42 percent of companies had said they were still not doing well. The impact was hardest on small and medium industries.  

The country was under continuous or intermittent lockdown at the time of the survey, Raihan said. Though the government has since lifted the lockdown in consideration of peoples’ livelihoods, business leaders are still not particularly confident about the future, he said.

According to the survey, at least 60 percent of workers at these businesses had received the vaccine.

Raihan called on all private and public institutions to work together to speed the country’s economic recovery.

Kazi Faisal Bin Seraj, the Bangladesh representative for The Asia Foundation, gave the opening remarks at the event.