Cheers to India's export reputation

NEW DELHI: Transparency International’s Bribe Payers’ Index (BPI) might suggest that Indian exporters have a lousy reputation as bribe givers overseas, but when it comes to India’s major export destinations , most do not seem to have such a low opinion of India . China is an exception, but then, Chinese companies have no great reputation themselves as they too rank at the bottom of the list sandwiched between India and Russia.

The US, India’s biggest market accounting for 17% of India’s total exports, gives India a decent score, 6.35 out of 10 in the BPI. The UAE, the second largest trade destination for Indian exports with an 8.5% share, gave India similar rating. Of the five countries that each account for at least 5% of India’s exports, executives in China alone gave India a sub-6 rating.

Interestingly, China was rated just one rank above India . In the corruption index, which Transparency brings out annually to rank countries based on the extent of domestic corruption, too, China was ranked quite low, as indeed was India. A similar pattern holds even if we look at all 21 countries that account for at least 1% each of India’s total exports.

Again, while 16 of them have given India 5-plus scores in the BPI, three of the five that haven’t are themselves seen by Transparency as pretty corrupt. These are China , Bangladesh and Brazil. Brazil was ranked the eighth worst in the BPI, while Bangladesh did not figure in that list, but was at bottom of the domestic corruption pile. The other two countries that gave India sub-5 scores in the BPI were Italy and France.

While their own rankings were in the middle range, Transparency criticised them for business practices in African countries.

An interesting aside: Among our neighbours, Pakistanis seem to have the best opinion of Indian businesses, giving them the best score of 5.94 out of ten followed by Sri Lanka. Nepal gives 3.11. Bangladesh gives the worst score of 3.01. That’s India’s worst rating among almost all its trading partners.

So what do we make of these interesting patterns? It could be that Indian exporters are more prone to offering bribes in countries where they have not yet registered a sizeable presence — hence the high scores among major export destinations.