A report issued on Tuesday by Transparency International, a global civil society anti-corruption organization, stated that 28 percent of citizens in Egypt believe that corruption rates have increased in 2015.
The survey, which was conducted on nine Arab countries including Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia and Jordan, showed that 61 percent of the citizens of these countries believe that corruption rates have increased in 2015.
Ninety-two percent of Lebanese citizens believe that corruption rates have increased in 2015, 84 percent in Yemen, 75 percent in Jordan, 70 percent in Palestine, 64 percent in Tunisia, 61 percent in Sudan, 51 percent in Algeria, 28 percent in Egypt, and 26 percent in Morocco.
Sixty-eight percent of 11,000 citizens surveyed in the nine Arab countries believe that their governments are doing poorly in the fight against corruption, the report said.
Fifty-eight percent of respondents in Egypt believed that the government is not exerting enough effort to fight corruption.
"Fifty million people in the Middle East and North Africa had to pay bribes to access the basic services that they needed," the report read.
Reuter's quoted the report, saying that almost one in three people in the region has had to pay bribes to public officials recently to attain essential services like electricity and medical treatment. Other services commonly attained by bribery are court services, police, permits and water.
The report mentioned that although dissatisfaction with the corrupt leaders and regimes was a key driver of the Arab Spring's revolutions over the past five years in many Arab countries, governments have made very little effort to implement anti-corruption laws.
Transparency International quoted Coralie Pring's report which expressed concern specifically toward the situation in Lebanon, which is suffering a deep political crisis and has not had a president for two years.
Pring's report expressed hope for the situation in Tunisia, saying it is the only Arab country that has not descended into chaos or dictatorship since the 2011 revolution.
"The report, which is based on results from a survey of nearly 11,000 adults in 9 countries and territories, sends a clear message: governments in the region have failed to meet the expectations of their citizens, who took to the streets en masse five years ago to stop corruption and oppression and demand their governments to be transparent and accountable," the Transparency International report read.
