TRACE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to anti-bribery, transparency, and good governance in global businesses, published the “2021 TRACE Bribery Risk Matrix” on November 17^th, 2021. Out of the 194 evaluated countries or regions, Taiwan ranked 15^th, receiving an average score of 17 (the scoring scale ranges from 1 to 100, the higher the score, the higher the “relative” risk). In both ranking and scoring, Taiwan improved from the ranking of 19^th and score of 19 in the 2020 edition, receiving the best results over the years and ranking first in Asia by way of surpassing Japan (18^th; 19), Singapore (19^th; 20), South Korea (21^st; 21), and Hong Kong (25^th; 22).

        TRACE uses the following 4 main indicators to calculate the weighted average risk score of each country or region: 1. Business Interactions with Government; 2. Anti-bribery Deterrence and Enforcement; 3. Government and Civil Service Transparency; 4. Capacity for Civil Society Oversight. Owing to excellent performances in the areas of government-business interaction, anti-bribery law enforcement, government transparency, and media freedom, Taiwan achieved excellent results in all major indicators.

        Taiwan published its first National Report on the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2018. During the subsequent international review conference, international anti-corruption experts acknowledged Taiwan’s anti-corruption determination and actions, presenting 47 concluding observations on “Taiwan’s Anti-Corruption Reform”, among which the prevention of corruption in the private sector attracted the collective attention of all sectors. In order to implement the requirements listed in the UNCAC, the Ministry of Justice has assisted businesses in strengthening company governance, fulfilling business ethics, and complying with regulations. The Ministry also cooperated with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Financial Supervisory Commission, Ministry of Finance, Taipei City Government, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Transportation and Communication to hold the “Foreign Business and Enterprise Integrity Forum”, for which academics, business representatives from various professional fields, NGOs, AmCham Taiwan, the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan (ECCT), and the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) were invited to participate. Through sharing experiences on the topics of international legal compliance systems and ideas, industrial legal compliance risks in the face of international practices, and foreign business corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship benchmarks, etc., the Forum provided an important and substantial exchange platform for the government and businesses and served to consolidate and strengthen the consensus on good corporate and government governance.

        At the same time, to ensure the quality of major public projects, the Agency Against Corruption (AAC) complied with the requests of the head of the agency to assist in the establishment of the “Government Procurement Integrity Platform”. By facilitating the joint participation of prosecuting, anti-corruption, and auditing agencies, the Integrity Platform effectively upheld openness and transparency and eliminated external forces, allowing for public servants to perform their duties without worries and ensuring that major public constructions projects can be completed on time and on quality. In addition, through the tentative evaluation mechanism of the “Integrity Awards (Tentative)” for the public sector, the AAC identified agencies that demonstrated effective performance, encouraging agencies to recognize model examples of clean governance and demonstrate their commitment to clean governance, set benchmarks, and gain the trust of the people, thereby achieving a common good through the gathering of positive energy in the role model learning process.

        For the international anti-corruption evaluations in 2021, Taiwan can be said to have achieved success across the board. In the “2020 Corruption Perceptions Index” published by Transparency International (TI), Taiwan ranked 28^th in the world, achieving a best result for two consecutive years. In the “2021 Index of Economic Freedom” published by the Heritage Foundation, Taiwan made a tremendous improvement by ranking 6^th, the country’s best result in the 27 years that the index has been published and in which the index of clean and competent government showed substantial improvement. In the “2020 Government Defence Integrity Index”(GDI) published by the Transparency International Defence & Security Programme (TI-DSP) , Taiwan received a score of 70, tying with Germany for 6^th in the world.

        The aforementioned achievements prove that Taiwan’s efforts to promote governance transparency, and establish a private sector anti-corruption mechanism have seen great results and gained the recognition of the global community. In the future, the AAC will continue to implement requirements from the UNCAC and promote and complete anti-corruption regulations. Through the Government Procurement Integrity Platform, the Agency will continue to cooperate with ministries and benchmark enterprises in various aspects, so as to deepen business ethics and compliance, strengthen public-private cooperative partnership in the anti-corruption, and promote the sustainable development of businesses and the government.