UNITED States ambassador to Jamaica, Sue Cobb, yesterday said Jamaica could well benefit from a US$5-billion fund to aid countries in their fight against corruption.

“We plan to make development funds available through the Millennium Challenge Accounts to those countries that are committed to good governance and engaged in the fight against corruption,” the ambassador told a group of business executives at a ‘Good Morning Jamaica Breakfast’ at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel.

“Jamaica may qualify for some of these funds over the next few years as it follows through on addressing corruption,” Cobb added.

For the ambassador, corruption takes on many faces and ranges from simply paying an “unofficial fee to expedite” the processing of paperwork to supporting funds as proposed by community leaders for “security purposes”. She also included, in her definition, a government official taking a bribe and handing out a contract, and policemen who accept money in exchange for letting a driver go free after a traffic violation.

It is actions like these that the ambassador believes contributed to Jamaica’s mere “four our of 10” on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index which ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians.

In addition, she pointed to a recent survey, done locally, which indicates that nearly 80 per cent of Jamaicans feel that there is corruption in the public sector, while 68 per cent feel that it exists among the police force.

“If four out of five Jamaicans believe there is a problem, then certainly something must be done to address it,” she warned.

According to Cobb, corruption also impacts negatively on the economy.

“Corruption is strongly tied to negative investment rates,” she said. “Most of you would agree that one of the biggest problems facing businesses today is the lack of investment capital.”

The private sector, Cobb said, is key to defeating the level of corruption, which she believes exacts the highest toll on developing countries like Jamaica and costs some governments as much as half of their total revenues.

“Public sectors officials, by and large, aren’t going around bribing each other so it is vital that the private sector understand the costs of corruption and refuse to encourage it, accept it or wink at it,” Cobb said.

But the small businesses are the ones hardest hit, she said, adding that a recent survey showed that they pay more than twice as much of their annual revenue in bribes than do large firms.

“Such circumstances are not only personally dangerous, they undercut the capacity of small businesses to act as engines of growth as they do in many countries,” she said.

And she suggested punishment for the corrupt.

“If I can accept bribes, extort money and grant favours with impunity, there is little incentive to stop,” she noted. “Until the cost of being corrupt outweighs the benefit, many people would simply find no reason to stop.”