Beauty Narteh, Executive Secretary of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, has bemoaned the excessive normalisation of corrupt practices in the country.
According to her, the normalisation of corruption in the country is evidenced by the justification given by Ghanaians in paying or accepting money (bribes) to circumvent laid down processes.
Over GHS 5bn was paid in bribes to public officials in 2021 alone, and this was to circumvent legally laid down processes.
“On the back of this we interviewed people to know what their thoughts on the findings were, and to our surprise, people didn’t see it as corruption, they didn’t see paying a ‘facilitation fee’ or conflict of interest as corruption. In some cases, the bribes were justified by the people, so corruption has become normalised and people are accepting corruption (sic),” she remarked.
Speaking further during the NorvanReports and Economic Governance Platform’s X Space Discussion on the topic, “Corruption In Ghana: Impact on Everyday Lives and the Economy”, she noted that, bribes paid by the private sector to public officials to circumvent processes are a contributory factor to increased prices of goods and services in the country.
According to her, unknown to the consuming public, bribes paid by businesses are added to the costs of goods and services thereby resulting in increased prices for the general public.
Bribes paid by the private sector are eventually forwarded to the final consumer resulting in increased prices of goods and services because you know, businesses are not Father Christmas, they will definitely want to recoup the monies used in paying bribes,” she added.
Ghana is estimated to lose between $12bn to $13bn annually through corruption according to IMANI Ghana.
Ghana has scored zero for the fourth consecutive year in fighting corruption, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023 by Transparency International (TI).
The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International in its report said, “Ghana scored 43 out of a clean score of 100 and ranked 70th out of 180 countries and territories included in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2023 released on 30th January 2024 by Transparency International (TI). This marks the fourth consecutive year of stagnation in Ghana’s anti-corruption efforts, as indicated by the CPI.”
Transparency International attributed Ghana’s stagnation to the deteriorating justice system, which it says is reducing the accountability of public officials and therefore allowing corruption to thrive.
