Corruption in Vietnam is pervasive and widespread, due to weak legal infrastructure, financial unpredictability, and conflicting and negative bureaucratic decision-making. Surveys from 2015 revealed that while petty corruption decreased slightly throughout the country, high-level corruption significantly increased as a means of abuse of political power in Vietnam.[1] Corruption is a very significant problem in Vietnam, impacting all aspects of administration, education and law enforcement.
Vietnam is an authoritarianone-party state under the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). In 2015, the party claimed that corruption had moved up the political agenda, and the legal framework for tackling corruption had become "better developed". However, political academics have cited that such efforts are likely a cover for a political purge between factions of the party.[1]
As of January 2018 Vietnam scored one of the highest rates of bribery practices – the rate citizens have paid a bribe to key public institutions over the past 12 months, at 65%, is second only to corruption in India with 69%.[2] In effect, as of 2012, corruption has been considered an obstacle for doing business in Vietnam, and the use of facilitation payments have been widespread when dealing with frontline civil servants at all levels of society.[3]
Ranking
Transparency International's 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, which scored 180 countries on a scale from 0 ("highly corrupt") to 100 ("very clean"), gave Vietnam a score of 41. When ranked by score, Vietnam ranked 83rd among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector.[4] For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90 (ranked 1), the average score was 43, and the worst score was 11 (ranked 180).[5] For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among the countries of the Asia Pacific region[Note 1] was 85, the average score was 45 and the lowest score was 17.[6]
Pervasiveness
Surveys from 2015 revealed that while petty corruption decreased slightly throughout the country, high-level corruption or systemic and political corruption significantly increased as a means of abuse of political power in Vietnam.[1]
As of January 2018 Vietnam scored one of the highest rates of bribery practices – the rate citizens have paid a bribe to key public institutions over the past 12 months, at 65%, is second only to Corruption in India with 69%.[2]
Effect
Vietnam is a developing country of about 96 million people as of 2018.[7]
As of 2012, corruption was considered an obstacle for doing business in Vietnam, and the use of facilitation payments have been widespread when dealing with frontline civil servants at all levels of society.[3]
Due to the international view of corruption in Vietnam, in 2020, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Vietnam stood at only US$28.5 billion, far below its ASEAN neighbours.[8]
Government anti-corruption efforts
In 2016, the ongoing "blazing furnace" (đốt lò) anti-corruption campaign was started by Nguyễn Phú Trọng, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.[9]
In 2021, the Vietnamese government claimed that it had taken stronger efforts to combat corruption.[10]
Officials implicated by the anti-corruption campaigns
Trịnh Xuân Thanh: Former Vietnamese politician and businessman. He is the former head of the state-owned Petrovietnam Construction Joint Stock Corporation (a subsidiary of Petrovietnam) and the former Deputy-Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee of Hậu Giang.
Dương Bá Thanh Dân: Director of the Department of Medical Supplies at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, in the Southeastern Province of Ninh Thuan, and his employee Nguyễn Đăng Đức.[11]
Tô Anh Dũng: Former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, (and seven other former officials at the foreign ministry) due to allegedly receiving bribes up to $908,000 to add companies to a list of providers of repatriation flights during COVID 19 epidemic.[12]
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