Level of corruption on the rise

07/02/2007

Based on the results of the survey on perception of corruption in society conducted by “Transparency International Armenia”, nine out of ten Armenian citizens think that corruption is the “biggest issue or a major issue” and see the conduct of free and fair parliamentary elections as the solution to this.

“I’m happy to see that people realize how important the electoral process is in the fight against corruption and look at that as a tool to keep the authorities informed,” told head of the organization Amalya Kostanyan to Radio Liberty. According to her, there were more people who said that they don’t accept corruption.

“People don’t think that the authorities are fighting against corruption effectively,” said A. Kostanyan. 64% of the people surveyed are certain that the level of corruption has gone up over the past three years, while half of them say that corruption has gone up considerably. Based on results of the survey, the most corrupted institutes were the president (60%), the prime minister and the ministers. The State Automobile Inspectorate, the electoral system and the Taxing service were said to be even more corrupt. The survey included 1500 home economies in 31 cities and 41 villages of Armenia.