Companies from emerging economic powers Russia and China are most likely to use bribes when doing business abroad, according to a new report from Transparency International (TI).
The Berlin-based corruption watchdog's 2008 Bribe Payers Index ranks 22 of the world's most economically influential countries on the tendency of their firms to bribe abroad.
The survey, based on interviews with 2,742 senior business executives and conducted between August 5 and October 29, scores the countries on a zero to 10 scale. The higher the score, the lower the likelihood of the companies to engage in bribery.
Russia, whose President Dmitry Medvedev has named corruption as one of the key challenges facing the country, was at the bottom of the list with a score of 5.9.
Just behind was China at 6.5, Mexico on 6.6 and India, with a score of 6.8. At the top of the ranking were Belgium and Canada, with scores of 8.8, trailed by The Netherlands and Switzerland.
"The BPI provides evidence that a number of companies from major exporting countries still use bribery to win business abroad, despite awareness of its damaging impact on corporate reputations and ordinary communities," TI Chair Huguette Labelle said in a statement.
TI last published its Bribe Payers Index in 2006. At that time, India was at the bottom of the ranking, just below China and Russia. Switzerland, Sweden and Australia had the best scores two years ago.
The corruption watchdog said last September that corruption in Russia had reached its worst level in eight years, despite years of promises from Vladimir Putin, and his successor Mr Medvedev to tackle graft.
Mr Medvedev unveiled a plan to fight corruption last August, but past Russian anti-graft drives have been limited to high-profile arrests of a few bribe-taking officials and had little wider impact.
TI said about half of its respondents reported that companies from Russia often bribe high-level politicians, political parties and low-level public officials when doing business abroad.
Like Russia, China faces a serious official corruption problem, which it is trying to stamp out with a range of measures, including death penalty sentences.
A report by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) released earlier this year found that corruption risked eroding the economic competitiveness of countries such as China and India.
The PERC report said the most serious corruption problem in China involved state-owned companies and those with access to state assets.