Corruption Costs: Mexico Worse Than Brazil

Despite the latest corruption scandal to hit Brazil, the South American country is actually more transparent than Mexico, according to a Latin Business Chronicle analysis of business surveys from the Swiss-based World Economic Forum and The World Bank.

Brazil fares better than Mexico when looking at such factors as undocumented extra payments or bribes connected with imports and exports, public utilities, annual tax payments, awarding of public contracts or licenses and obtaining favorable judicial decisions, according to the latest executive opinion survey by the World Economic Forum.

With 1 as “very common” and 7 as “never occurs,” Brazil received an average score of 4 points, while Mexico’s score was 3.6 points. That means that Brazil ranks as the fifth-best country in Latin America of 18 countries, while Mexico ranks 10^th. Mexico has the same score as countries like Greece and Ethiopia.

The WEF survey, which was ...

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Keywords: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela

TABLE Latin America: Corruption Cost