Research On Corruption And Transparency System In Government Procurement

Transparency system in government procurement (referred as “GP”) means tobuild a regulating system, involving the construction of information disclosure,supervision and evaluation in the fields of laws and regulations, policies and measures,based on the principle of transparency in GP. Since the government procuringactivities should serve for people’s merits, and save the fiscal expenditure, thefoundation of the GP system was based on an idea of purchasing goods, services andprojects under the principle of “Value for Money” through centralized governmentprocurement. Therefore, GP system should help curb the corruption and encourage theintegrity in this field for its open and transparent features. Unfortunately, the reality isalmost reversed. The annual report2009published by Transparency Internationalestimates, corruption in some Asian countries can put a20%-100%extra load on theprocuring costs3. In the meantime, the corrupt purchases reduce the qualities ofprocuring goods, services and projects, incurring underlying threats to the public.Thus, despite people’s consensus on the corrupt free GP, GP itself still needs morestrict supervising systems to avoid corruption.The essence of corruption is “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”4. Theperformances of corruption in GP can be described as complex and diverse: settingrents from rulers, various means of bribery from suppliers, the collusions betweensuppliers or between suppliers and GP officials. Above all, corruption thrives in thedark and manipulation for personal benefit is facilitated by opacity. Thus, to prevent corrupt behaviors in GP, the basic and best solution is to invite sunshine into this areaand build up a transparency system.Since1990s, under the promotion of WTO, the international community hasfocused on the transparency issues in GP. In WTO-GPA, transparency refers to theopenness of rules and regulations, procedures and measures, the unity of theinformation channel, and the system of supervision and scrutiny in GP. On one hand,the international community—organizations like WTO, UNCITRAL, WB and TI,countries like the US and the ROK—study on the transparent system in GPintensively, based on their probe into the definition and significance of building atransparent system. On the other hand, China’s researching area still remains on thebasic level of this field, which drives Chinese government to learn the matureexperience on founding a transparent system in GP from the internationalorganizations and foreign countries.Ground on the understanding of the conceptions above, this paper commits to theanalysis on the corrupt problems and the solution—transparent system in the contextof GP. This essay briefly analyses corrupt phenomena in government procurement,amply testifies the necessity of a transparent system from theoretical and practicalperspectives. Then it presents an overview of the transparent situation in and out ofChina. At the end, in order to improve the current situation in China, it gives reliablesuggestions on curbing corruption and building transparent system in China’s GP field:①enhance the status of laws and regulations;②embed transparency through thewhole process of GP;③improve the system of supervision and regulation;④reservetalents in GP;⑤develop further construction of e-government procurement system.