CRRC team has delivered presentations in English and Armenian on the outcomes of corruption survey, carried out in the framework of USAID Mobilizing Action Against Corruption (MAAC) program. This time the opinions of business leaders were the main focus of discussion, although data on earlier CRRC public opinion survey served as point of comparison for some issues.

The first presentation by Dr. Hans Gutbrod, CRRC Regional Directior, took place at the US Embassy in Yerevan on March 23rd. The presentation would turn into a dialog from time to time, with questions and observations voiced as they occurred to the listeners: a rewarding and fruitful atmosphere for any researcher, because it shows that what you do is interesting, and it gives you new ideas to focus on.

We knew we did a good job in delivering our findings, when on the next day at MAAC Anti-Corruption Forum one of the key speakers re-iterated some of the results he found intriguing when listening to Dr. Gutbrod’s presentation: the awareness of corruption is very high in the Armenian society, and there appears to be a certain moral reservoir leading to refusing bribes, despite that fear of punishment is almost absent. These are some of many insights one could draw from looking at CRRC Corruption Surveys’ results. We do our best to summarize and present some of the key things: a 45 minutes presentation by CRRC-Armenia team at MAAC forum is another example.

Corruption Survey of Enterprises 2009

Nonetheless, we at CRRC feel that we have only touched the tip of the iceberg. We would like to encourage interested scholars and policy-makers to explore the information we have been collecting and spread the word. Survey 2008 data is available online. Survey 2009, which includes both Household Survey and Private Enterprise Survey will be going life end of April, beginning of May and will be actively promoted. Stay tuned!