OECD’s Integrity Forum has become one of the leading public fora on integrity and anti-corruption worldwide, bringing together relevant policy communities as well as the private sector, civil society organisations and academia. It takes place during the broader context of the OECD Integrity Week.

The 2016 edition of the Integrity Forum, taking place in Paris on 19-20 April 2016, will offer two tracks:

Integrity and Trade Track

International trade is a motor of the global economy and represents increasingly large volumes of goods, services, and financial flows. Yet, the economic benefits resulting from trade can suffer from a lack of integrity throughout the international supply chain. This can result in a substantial loss of revenue for governments, and can hamper competition and business activity. It can also entail important health and safety risks for societies. Integrity measures that protect cross-border trade not only produce advantages for the economy in general, but also for private companies, the public sector and society as a whole.

The 2016 edition of the OECD Integrity Forum will put the spotlight on this hidden tariff. It will bring stakeholders to the table to develop a long-term vision for clean trade. The Integrity Forum fosters dialogue for policy actions and cooperative integrity efforts to prevent corruption in customs and to protect supply chains. In addition, new evidence and insights will be shared for countering illicit trade.

High-level speakers will confront the issues of corruption that impact global trade, informal sessions will provide an opportunity to examine solutions in greater depth, authors, academics and students will share their findings during poster presentations, and lunch debates and roundtable discussions will give you the opportunity to share your experience directly with your peers.

Integrity Track

Recent economic, geopolitical and demographic developments have underscored the growing complexities that governments, businesses and citizens face in our increasingly globalised world. The Integrity Forum provides a platform to address the integrity dimensions of these pressing challenges.

Moreover, the Integrity Forum zooms in on new integrity instruments and responds to the growing demand for evidence-based policy recommendations.

The programme features the following sessions:

• In the Public Interest: Preventing Corruption in State-owned Enterprises

• Use of Offsets in Procurement of Defence Material

• Exploiting Tragedy: Corruption and the Refugee Crisis

• Corruption along the Extractive Value Chain: Mitigating and Preventing Risks through Incentives

• Corruption, Climate Change and Illegal Timber Trade

• Building Capacity for Collective Action 

• Standards, Certification and Accreditation Instruments for Corporate Integrity

• Building the Evidence Base: from Integrity Data to Policy Insights

Bringing new ideas, evidence and insights: ResearchEdge Poster Sessions

In response to fast-moving insights from integrity research and practice, the Integrity Forum invites pioneers from a variety of backgrounds and academic disciplines to share their latest evidence and findings. Through poster sessions, participants are inspired to join the debate for mobilising integrity data to advance policy insights.

The poster sessions connect academic insights and evidence with policy-making. They highlight a selection of innovative research on integrity, anti-corruption and trade, resulting from a competitive Call for Papers by the OECD. Research covers topics such as Collective Action, Countering Illicit Trade, Proofing Supply Chains against Corruption, Corruption in Infrastructure Projects and the Impact of International Conventions to prevent Corruption.

The invited researchers will present their findings during the Integrity Forum ResearchEdge poster sessions and guided poster tours will be offered by renowned academics.

The full papers can be found here.

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Fighting the hidden tariff: Global trade without corruption

Background

International trade has driven the global economy and development during the last few decades. Trade has risen in nearly all parts of the world, becoming one of the most dynamic sources of growth and a powerful enabler of economic development for many countries. In 2014, the total world exports of goods and services amounted to USD 23.6 trillion, of which the OECD countries generated USD 14 trillion, and the total imports of goods and services reached USD 22.8 trillion, of which 13.9 trillion were accounted for by OECD countries.

Considering the importance of international trade for global economic growth, the costs generated by non-tariff barriers, such as those related to the lack of integrity in border control and customs administrations, can be quite significant for the public and private sectors, citizens and society as a whole. Loss of revenue caused by customs-related corruption is estimated to cost World Customs Organization (WCO) members at least USD 2 billion in customs revenue each year, with India losing USD 334 million and Russia USD 223 million. Moreover, unnecessary trade barriers created by nontransparent, burdensome rules and procedures can constitute vulnerabilities that may create important incentives to engage in corrupt behaviour.

Trade facilitation measures have the potential to benefit all countries. It is estimated that a complete implementation of trade facilitation measures arising from the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement could reduce trade cost by 16.5% for low income countries, by 17.4% for lower middle income countries, by 14.6% for upper middle income countries, and by 11.8% for OECD countries.

Implementing appropriate governance structures, accountability mechanisms and integrity policies in customs administrations alone has the potential to reduce trade costs by between 0.5% and 1.1% for the same country groups. These measures seek to eliminate opportunities for customs policy capture, extortion, offering bribes, as well as for numerous schemes allowing for the avoidance of taxes and tariffs, such as underreporting of exports and over-invoicing of imports.

All relevant stakeholders have an interest in elaborating and promoting mutually supportive trade integrity and facilitation policies that would remove unnecessary trade barriers while implementing effective checks and balances on fraud and corruption. Indeed, the cost for inaction is significant as it exposes society to global threats engendered by the dark side of globalization. For instance, a lack of effective integrity checks and balances in customs administrations may benefit organized crime by allowing illicit trade and smuggling to thrive, which range from strictly prohibited goods such as narcotics, to counterfeit consumer goods and pirated goods.

The aim is thus to find the right balance between easing red tape while having appropriate controls, taking into account the local context and its inherent risk areas. The main elements of a strategy to promote integrity in trade should respond to identified integrity risks and target most harmful behaviours and opportunities for seeking illicit rents arising from global supply chains. The measures discussed in this report build on OECD’s standards and good practices for the public and private sectors, and respond to main trade-related risks.

Finding appropriate tools and solutions to tackle corrupt practices in trade is not a simple endeavour, and there is no single fix solution that can effectively address all risks in a broad range of contexts. To effectively address lack of integrity in international trade, a risk based approach to promoting integrity is required, combined with ongoing dialog with relevant stakeholders outside government. An important starting point is to establish and enforce clear prohibitions against bribery and corruption that apply to both public and private sectors. Further priority measures emerged from good practices:

• Designing and implementing comprehensive risk management strategies for global supply chains for both public and private sectors;

• Reinforcing integrity controls in corruption risk areas in the public sector, including customs administrations and border control agencies;

• Combining incentives with enhanced enforcement to encourage businesses to implement good governance and integrity controls;

• Harmonising transparency, integrity and trade facilitation standards through trade agreements;

• Strengthening collaboration among all stakeholders to increase commitment to abide by existing rules, procedures and standards, and to identify corruption vulnerabilities and effective mitigation measures and to build a culture of integrity in collective action.