Indian firms got the best ratings in a survey of emerging market multinationals released Thursday by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International.
Urging rapidly-expanding companies in economies such as China and India to become more publicly accountable, Transparency International praised Indian firms' relatively high standards, while China got the lowest rating among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping economies.
Chinese companies made up a third of the total sample in the survey of 100 of the fastest-growing multinationals in 16 emerging economies.
Seventy-five percent of the companies scored less than five out of 10 on a scale of how transparently they present measures to combat corruption, how they report on their organisations and how they disclose data like revenue, expenditure and taxes.
"Seventy-five of the 100 companies in the report come from the BRICS, which have contributed 50 percent of world growth since the crisis," the Berlin-based group said.
"Results show that companies from China lag behind in every dimension with an overall score of 20 percent," Transparency said.
"Considering their growing influence in markets around the world, this poor performance is of concern," the report added.
"Chinese companies had the weakest overall performance among the BRICS countries, highlighting the need for China and its business community to take immediate action to raise their standards," Transparency said.
The organisation said Indian firms perform best among BRICS with a result of 54 percent, and several of them occupy the top positions in the overall index, attributing this to laws in India about how multinationals must report on subsidiaries.
India's Tata Communications topped the list, as also the anti-corruption programmes category, with 92 percent, followed by three more Tata companies.
In a sub-index ranking of the BRICS nations, which the corruption watchdog said account for 20 percent of global economic output and 15 percent of world trade, the companies from first-placed India were followed by South Africa, Russia, Brazil and China.
--Indo-Asian News service
bc/vt
