 Good morning, everyone. My name is Yan Qingyang. It is a great pleasure for me to be here to moderate this session. And we know that transparency, accountability, and the free of the grab is something I do, we want for our economic and political society and system. But the reality is that we have been plagued by the enduring corruption all across the globe. And also Asia is not immune to this reality, obviously. Although catching up very quickly, but this region continues to be ranked behind the advanced economy, according to their accountability and transparency issue. And more violently, sleep, economic growth may give more room for the more tolerance for the corruption and also the less transparency and less accountability. Evidence is that according to the World Economic Forum, Global Competitive Report, the institutional index for the several countries in Asia, including China, India, Indonesia and also Philippine, Vietnam and also Myanmar, the index of the institution is more or less behind of the overall institution or overall index of the competitiveness. It's kind of evidence of that. Maybe we should pay more attention to this issue. And so what kind of strategy should leaders adopt to tackle this issue and also create a culture of the transparency, accountability in all these fronts? This is the core question we're going to answer this morning during this session. And also I want to share with you now that this session is linked to a patchy, which is the partnering against a corruption initiative of the forum. And I'm very happy to let you know that Elaine, the leader of this initiative, has agreed to introduce the patchy very briefly here. And let's warmly welcome Elaine and the floor is yours for one minute. Thank you. Thanks, Jane. And welcome to the session. Just very briefly, patchy started about 10 years ago with a program that includes more than 100 CEOs in the forum who've signed on to zero tolerance policy around corruption within their own organizations. But that serves as the framework as the basis for engaging in a much broader regional and global dialogue around anti-corruption and transparency. So we'd be happy to talk to anyone about patchy, what we do, where we're going with our initiative and the kinds of organizations who are engaged. So thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Elaine. Now it's time for me to briefly introduce our distinguished panel here. To my left is Mr. Asanga. He has a very long surname which is A-I-Y-G-G-N-A-S-I-K-R-A. I hope it's correct. It's from Indonesia. From Sri Lanka, I'm sorry. And next to him Steven Fox I'm sorry. Asanga is the executive director of the L-K-I-I-R-S-S also a very long name of civilization. Next to him Steven Fox, managing partner of Varacity Worldwide is from the United States. And also next to him very honorable Abad secretary of the budget and management of the Philippines. And next to him Mr. Serge Pan he can speak a very perfect Chinese. He's the chairman of the Serge Pan and Associates from Myanmar. And also Dan, Rang Di he's the chair and director of the project on prosperity and development of the famous organization, Think Tank C-S-I-S. And last but not least Ernest Sang Di Janna. He's the only global, brilliant global shipper in our panel and he's the principal of the Boston Consulting Group of Indonesia. Now let me start with Secretary Abad. A good news for you is that the Philippines is now a rising star in this region. And also we know that all agencies have raised the credit rating of the sovereign debt of this country to investment level which is tribal being. And actually I had an interview with the secretary of the finance pre-SIMA and he said that the good governance translated and contributed to the good economic growth. Do you agree with him? Of course. I think he's absolutely correct. But seriously this administration has been vigorously pursuing good governance reform since its inception. And because of that I think we've been able to achieve something that is so fundamental in any state that's pursuing reforms which is really the restoration of the classworthiness of government. And that's seen in the unprecedented approval as well as the trust rating of this administration. And because of that without even having to increase taxes except for the you know, syntax reforms and without even having to borrow more we are borrowing less. We've managed to invest in unprecedented terms in social protection social services like public education public health, basic education public health, social housing and even infrastructure. And as a result of that the economy has grown last year to 7.2%. And that's really founded on really on a platform of good governance. And that's why this government strongly believes that that platform has to continue to be the platform for the next 2.5 years as we pursue this time around a more focused investments on inclusive development, not just simply economic growth. So I think that is really the foundation upon which this performance this renewed confidence and trust not just of the people but even of the investing public on the Philippines right now. So I think overall the Philippines has made a particular progress and a brilliant progress in economic growth and also to the governance but you are in charge of the budget and what kind of the particular France here for you have contributed to this governance maybe more transparency, more accountability. We have 3 objectives in the budget department. We want to be able to spend within our means spend on the right priorities and spend with measurable outcomes and in all those 3 we have been able to do in my view rather well you know we have been able to stay committed to our fiscal consolidation program so we've stayed within our deficit cap commitments. Our priorities are firmly focused on the improvement of the delivery of basic social services as well as the expansion of the economy and right now we're introducing unprecedented reforms in the budget process from budget preparation where we involve civil society organizations where we insist that on a performance informed budget process to budget execution we are improving on spending and as a result that's recognized by the ratings agencies as well as making sure that we're able to monitor and report outcomes of the government spending and we've done that quite well I believe. And also is anti-corruption issue is on the priority of your gender as well? Certainly from the very start this government has put in the tension of former president has convicted of chief justice and has removed from office and I think that message comes across very well among our people that this government is serious. Really encouraging news from the Philippines now that's moved on to the other countries in Asia shall we start with landmark? What kind of progress has been made there? I'll try to touch on the subject which is probably a very significant subject in our country by giving you a background of how our reforms have started actually unlike many emerging markets in the past 30 years where economic reform takes a major sort of place. Myanmar started its first two years of reform since the new government came to power solely on political and social reforms if you look at our first legislation that was passed in the parliament it was a labor law and then it was a freedom of press law and there was a land rights issue the foreign investment law actually came nearly 20 months later and so in the process of doing social and political reform one of the major agendas for our government was to create a level playing field to end monopoly, cronyism, nepotism and to be transparent and anti-corruption now these were very big words, very big goals but to the extent of looking back today I think our government has done tremendously well particularly given the context of Asia and particularly given the background historical background of how we were in the past 20 years prior to this government so today I think we've made a lot of headway as a businessman I can personally feel and vouch that at the very top of our government transparency anti-corruption takes center stage and we don't have to worry about paying anybody or dealing with that issue of course eradicating or eliminating or even reducing corruption I think it's a subject that will go on for a long time and requires more than just theoretical or rhetoric it requires structural reforms to the government the civil service for instance to the police force to the armed forces pay scale and everything that goes with that without that it's difficult but having said that I think as a businessman I think we're very very happy of what we see today I think it's very important to say that the anti-corruption fighting should be conducted against the very big backdrop of the structural reform I think it's very important also what kind of the stories can we share from Indonesia and also from Sri Lanka first I think I'll touch upon some of your introduction earlier by saying that Indonesia has been blessed with very vast economic growth over the last decade so to a certain extent many people were saying yes corruption is an issue but it hasn't hampered our economic growth really but the last few years I think the mindset has shifted slightly because the expectation has actually gone up tremendously now people are talking about how do we become the major economic force in the region and how do we make sure the economic growth actually translate into the well-being of our people and as a result I think it's people are actually taking the time to step back and stepping out the effort on anti-corruption activities in Indonesia and progress has been made if you look at our anti-corruption commission in the country we have a respected public institution in the country you look at the number of cases that they have handled it has improved tremendously and it covers very senior ranking officials cabinet members parliament members something that is unheard of just a decade ago in Indonesia and secondly I think we'll see that in the past few years in election whether it's regional election or parliament reelection that people no longer tolerate because of the new generation of leaders that are elected into office are those that has shown track record of being clean and care about the people so I think this has actually put a lot of pressure as well on government officials to think about it a little bit more before they engage in corrupt activities which is a good progress and I think the last thing that I also mentioned is on the private sector side given the vast economic potentials a lot of companies are actually thinking about growing aggressively and as a result they need access to financing as well as investors and very often as they go abroad for funds they are required to upgrade themselves in the level of governance that they need to have in their companies and we have started seeing the next generation companies are demonstrating transparency because they actually need to do so to compete on a global scale but one challenge I think for the country that I would also add is that a lot of the focus today in the country still focuses a lot on after the fact so we talk a lot about corrupters being put to justice but not enough effort yet on preventing from act of corruption to begin with because a lot of the reform happens at the top level of the government and top level of business leaders level but hasn't really gone down to the operative level as Serja mentioned earlier so I think one area that has been discussed in the country is that we need to look at this anti-corruption activity not only as an end goal but it's actually part of achieving the larger objective so for example government needs to provide better quality and more efficient public service that should be the goal not just stopping corruption in delivering that public service and this requires us to think about putting in metrics in the country so because what gets measure gets done so have a service standard for public services and make sure the operative level people are actually track against that so if people want to renew their identity card the service level is 24 hours and you are measured against it and the effort is how to reduce that turnaround time as opposed to just reducing corrupt activities great but the great point is that prevention also in the first place is maybe more important than the exposed punishment then what about the story from Sri Lanka Sri Lanka I think after three decade war so 2009 the end of the war so there is a tremendous growth in the economy see record number of tourist arrivals from 200,000 to about a million within a short period of time and in terms of corruption fighting corruption so we have the institutions like the bribery commission public service commission many acts are there to fight corruption so in the global CPI index Sri Lanka is around 91 and regionally if you look at in South Asia Sri Lanka is in a better position because after Bhutan it's Sri Lanka it's number 2 I think but there are many issues because being in the government service for nine years I've served for nine years so there's many issues that the agencies are facing for example the enforcement of certain high level officers need to be low level as well high level needs to be addressed because none of the ministers or presidents have been arrested so the highest level has not been looked at there are certain issues like independence of the fighting agencies so and as well as but the media is well reporting bribery which is a good thing and it's coming on the front page always and I think there are many tools that is also slowly coming in one tool which I've introduced I paid a bribe it's getting a bit popular so I think Sri Lanka is a good platform we can introduce many things regionally because back in 70's we had the transparency we have acts and laundering so we have signed for those things so I think there is corruption is still high but there is a lot of space for the government administration to be efficient so between the government officers there's a key role they need to play because government if you look at the public servants being paid very low salaries and that is I think a big issue for corruption these are some of the points shall we pay more salary to the civil servants yes absolutely yes absolutely I think that one of the factors in having corruption happen is that they're not very well paid civil servants so it's a little bit it's intellectually lazy to say we shouldn't pay civil servants an exorbitant salary or it's easy to ape that argument but if we want to have if I think about international civil servants if I think about civil servants at the IMF or civil servants at the World Bank there's a reason why they're paid relatively well so that they're not bribeable in essence they're not really bribeable but it sets a standard to the extent that you have well paid civil servants and you professionalize civil servants what it means is that there's less of a temptation to work either to take bribes or to have other sorts of moonlighting jobs on the side in particular one area of focus ought to be professionalizing procurement systems something like 20% of the gross national product of many developing countries goes through procurement systems every year but often times it's not considered a very prestigious sort of activity and not very professionalized Indonesia I know for example is working with the Malayim Challenge Corporation professionalizing its procurement system both at the national and sub national level but I think across the world this is something that we need to focus on so we absolutely should be paying civil servants competitive and attractive wages and getting good people for example in some of the conversations yesterday one of the blockages to growth in developing countries is the issue of having government capacity having quality government doesn't mean having big government necessarily but having effective government means having well paid professional civil servants and that are clean to the extent possible I think it's very important to have an effective government and maybe the higher salaries for civil servants Singapore as an example Singapore is a salary for the civil servants among the highest and very factor but the people tend to complain on that how could you explain it and persuade the people that it is needed well a couple of things one is Singapore has great growth it's a very attractive economy people want to live there people want to work there people want to invest there A, B, there's a sense that and there's a perception in the indicators of the level of corruption than say other parts of Asia so there's a in essence they're getting what they're paying for which is better quality government and lower corruption and better governance we will go back to the Singapore to be later for the kind of chronic capitalism Singapore is not exception and now we will move to the Stephen how do global investors perspective towards Asia in terms of the transparency and anti-corruption France is this situation and the climate here improving or worsening so let me be very candid as a native New Yorker there are a host of challenges in the region and perception is not great it is getting better and there are select examples that are terrific and I turn and I cite Myanmar and I look at the awarding of the telecom license process which took place last year and we think about tone at the top and to say right from the very highest levels in the country from the present on down could we create a system that would be designed to minimize corruption and to award an important license and to bring in key foreign investment that would have a transformative effect in the country at the top most level great results but as Serge flagged earlier when you get down below the top level at middle and then at very much working levels there is a tremendous gap so then the issue that comes up people say well in Asia there is simply a culture and you can't change the culture I would argue to you that that answer is not good enough and the demand particularly from youth and if you cite some recent data that comes from the millennium challenge goals when you ask youth what in the 18 to 25 year old bracket is the number one impediment in your own future you would have thought that the answer might be poverty or education but the answer is corruption and that says to me from the bottom up there is a desire to see a different way of looking at the world so how do you marry that with a great example in a place like Myanmar very good work that's happening here in the Philippines along with tremendous blockages that still exist when I hear stories of people needing to go to a license and obtain a license and a permit and then having to pay and pay and pay in order to be able to make that happen and from the perspective of a foreign investor as you will know foreign investors are obliged to follow the laws of the US the UK other signatories to their conventions and they simply cannot operate in that way so if you're going to have foreign investors be effective in working in the southeast Asian region then there needs to be a move towards change it's naive to think that's going to happen overnight but if we think of it as a journey and a process that goes on over time where are we on that journey I would say that there's good progress that's been made there's good intention but there's still a long way to go a lot of the big challenges please you know it's cultural in a way if you relate it to the problem of patronage which breeds on poverty and as a consequence creates relationships of dependency and that's why I think inclusive development programs that really provide genuine support that leads to the empowerment of not just key sectors but key geographical areas that have been neglected for a long period of time I think is key if you don't make a significant dent on the problem of poverty I think the culture of patronage will continue to prevail and I think that's it's a problem that we face in the Philippines that's why there's great sense of urgency in approaching for example the whole challenge of inclusive growth in a spatial and sectoral manner so really you know we begin to develop as what Asimoglu and Jim Robinson say inclusive structures on a small and micro level and scale this up so that eventually you know you have a you move away from culture of dependency to you know some degree of self-reliance especially for you know sectors that historically have been denied access to public services. Yeah it's very important. Yeah if I may just add the issue of cultural sort of the burden we Asians in particular and probably its global but more prevalent in Asia that corruption is part of the culture I think it's futile to say that's wrong that's not acceptable because the fact is that it is part of our culture for a very long time it has been used as a business tool rather than something bad and to change that I feel that we almost try to change the mindset we like to say today that corruption is not a matter of habit you can't say I've done this all my life so there's nothing wrong with it or when you look at somebody by me you feel there's nothing wrong with it you must raise it to a level where corruption is actually a cancer it's like a cancer cell that will grow and you will die and if you look at a lot of the emerging markets where they've been successful and become prosperous many a times the sacrifice is that the gap of poor and rich just gets bigger as they get more successful economically and one of the main reasons is that the benefits just don't trickle down they get siphoned off into all pockets instead of trickle down to the people so while you might have economic success the people don't actually get the benefits very few become ultra rich the majority become it's still as poor or even poorer and the main reason is corruption so if we take it as a disease and you do not view disease kindly you tackle with it and you try to eliminate it then we have a chance like yesterday this morning somebody was saying about a minister being asked about corruption and the businessmen say well I don't want to be corrupt but you have to solve the problem because if I'm not paying my competitors are paying I would simply not survive so that brings us to the second part of it is that how do we solve it and whether we really have a level playing field and we just cannot say don't be corrupt while you allow this practice to still go you really have to go in from the government to solve that issue but I feel that we've come a long way as far as corruption and it's a buzzword everybody wants to be entire corrupt but how does countries look at corruption and today in Asia it is still not viewed as a cancer and unless that is raised to that level it will continue to exist it's a bit like some of our ancient food it's not healthy but we've been eating it for eating it for generations so we think it's fine now we become health conscious and the food we've been eating for generations is no good anymore so you got to stop eating that food corruption I think is the same I just wanted to talk about if we were in this room 20 years ago I think we'd have been filled with cigarette smoke or if we were in the United States 50 years ago there would have been cigarette smoke if we met in a hotel so if we think about corruption in the ways we think about smoking cigarettes or litter that there's been a change in mindset there's been a series of carrots and sticks there's been a lot of conversation campaigns leadership that have led to the fact that we don't have any cigarette smokers in this room today in this room right now in this room right now I'll have a cigar with you afterwards but the point is that and I need protection I feel like there's a stigma on you yes you feel like that so there's been a change in the stigma around this concept this conversation around smoking there's a changing stigma around the world on the issue of corruption and just a couple points I think that the issue of corruption is absolutely salient in much of the world I think there was a World Economic Forum survey 67 of the 144 countries surveyed it was a top 3 issue in 67 countries was the issue of corruption so I think it absolutely it touches at the heart of legitimacy whether it's a democratic government or a non-democratic government in Asia to deal with the issue of corruption it absolutely puts the threatens the legitimacy of your government and so if you're a political leader I think there's a very strong incentive to deal with this issue I think the fact that this room is full I think it also speaks to the fact that this is a front and center issue I also think that there are a number of ways we can combat it and some of it is around this issue of stigma but things like the doing business indicators so the sorts of economic reforms in essence reduce the concept of a near occasion of sin reduce the opportunities for sin to happen to the extent that you don't have to have ongoing interpersonal relations with bureaucrats on an ongoing basis either things like e-procurement or reducing the number of steps to start a business, the amount of permits all these sorts of things do matter because it reduces the amount of corruption opportunities if you will I can think in another region of the world in Ethiopia there was doing business indicators at the World Bank at one point if you wanted to register a formal business in Ethiopia you had to spend $4,000 on publishing an ad in the newspaper in a newspaper in Addis Ababa that you were going to start a formal business well it happened to be that the newspaper was owned by the president's brother and $4,000 I think is multiples of whatever the annual income is for most Ethiopians you could probably argue that buying a $4,000 advertisement in the local newspaper in Addis Ababa probably wasn't necessary for starting a formal business so reducing the number of steps reducing the opportunity for corruption does matter as well so the corruption is like a cancer it's like a addiction and also it might be in your body so it's difficult to cope with let me give you a further maybe a tricky question about the crony capitalism because the Economist magazine has established a crony capitalism index which is tracking the wealth of the millionaires in such industries like the mining like the oil and like gas, banking, casino and also maybe the real estate which is very dependent on the relationship with the government and they found that this kind of index in Asia including all these Asian countries is about twice as that's the index in the advanced economy which means that in Asian culture we do have some kind of feeling about Guanxi in Chinese we call Guanxi it's very important how can we cope with a very difficult issue about the culture and also the behavior the habit and also it's kind of addiction in this area if I may ask the young global leaders I think the culture accepting the culture is wrong I mean we'll start with because you need to you need to move forward you need to sort of move into a better culture because you can't accept the culture of the Asian fees or lobbying fees or political financing let me give you an example now you have the asset declaration of politicians before the elections what's the use of just declaring your assets you need to analyze the assets from first election to the next election you need to analyze the growth for example you have 5 vehicles in the first election you have 50 vehicles so you can draw up a graph so quantification is really important we don't do quantification at all and individual citizens can be empowered to quantify data for example your phone can have a tool a small tool where you can write I paid a bribe to this person without the names but you can quantify this police station is corrupt than the other police station this department inside the government ministry is corrupt which helps the government so these are tools that can be you know sort of implemented easily but you need to have the political will the issue is there's no political will there's lack of political will in this entire region I see there are many governments that come into power and all that they talk about it but are they actually doing it Singapore is a shining example I think being number 5 in the CPI index I think a shining example of fighting corruption because you don't need a rest warrant to take somebody in you don't need the viewer of Singapore can investigate immediately or anybody so I think that is enforcement actually practicing anti-corruption mechanisms that's really important to empower those citizens because it doesn't happen vertically so you have to play it horizontally I think the way you approach it depends on how you characterize the problem beyond being a management or a technical issue as in the case of the Philippines this problem is a fundamental structural problem that's rooted in colonial history that eventually bred a system of oligarchy in this country this Aquino administration is different in the sense that it came to power really without being absolutely hostage or without having to ponder to manage interests to ascend to power in fact it's road on the outrage of a people that's been completely frustrated with the regime that has mismanaged this country and as a result President Aquino is leading a state that we can say or characterize as being relatively autonomous from this narrow self-interested groups and as a result the state can behave like the disruptive state that it is right now and I think that's very key if you want real changes how to what extent because considering the very strong influence of elements that receives change and you know the limited capacity of countervailing forces from civil society from concerned businessmen from enlightened politicians I think the state has to take it upon itself to provide that leadership that's really what is happening to the Aquino administration right now I think I'll just add to your question how do you break this culture of chronic capitalism I think the reason why it's still so prevalent at least in Indonesia is because it's all about cost and benefit I think the cost of maintaining this relationship are still considered cheaper than the opportunity that we have lost by not maintaining this relationship so I think one of the key area that we need to think about is how do you make it expensive for these people to actually rely on capitalism to do business and there are several examples that we can do it in Indonesia to be successfully growing your company in a big scale people talk about relationship and financing so how do we engage the financial services sector for example to be more prudent when they are giving financing to these companies on ethical standards that the company are actually deploying in their respective companies and secondly I think as a young person I think I've been surrounded by a lot of young people who are not accepting the culture as Asanga said and one good example that I think I can showcase is a friend of mine who actually joined a major company and very quickly he realizes that to get things done you actually need to bribe the local officials so he decided to leave the company because this is not the type of environment that he wants to be surrounded under and if you look at Indonesia today one of the key challenges for businesses to grow is talent so I think this is one of the areas that I would say that talent crunch is actually a good thing because I think going forward if companies cannot show these young people that they can operate in a cleaner in a more fair way they will actually also find it difficult to get young talent to fill in the middle management positions which is also inhibitor for growth and yet there is a price to it the young people will change our future in terms of raising the cost sometimes it's not going to necessarily be a legal pathway to raise the cost it's not going to be having an independent civil society that's going to raise a red flag and say something's wrong here or it's going to be independent media that's going to say there's something wrong here not so much just naming and shaming but also looking at some of the root causes of corruption as well but I do think that having independent civil society and independent media are an important part of raising the costs on corruption because I do think there is a stigma attached to it and an increasing stigma attached to it in terms of in terms of in terms of this issue of crony capitalism I wanted to suggest two additional things to think about one is how do we encourage entrepreneurs to participate in entered markets but second how do we use trade agreements I thinking of here in this region TPP is being negotiated to what extent do we use do we include anti-corruption chapters in TPP I can think of other examples in the United States with bilateral trade agreements such as the U.S. Panama free trade agreement I also think the U.S. Columbia free trade agreement or the accession of Russia which is not exactly a great example right now but if you look at their accession to the WTO there were a series of steps they had to meet in terms of on anti-corruption issues so we should be using trade agreements to force in domestically should be using these trade agreements as vehicles to force opening up of their markets and perhaps diluting the influence of crony capitalists that's already happening to an extent in the sense that big corporates that are operating in these markets as they go further and further down their supply chain they're demanding that their local partners meet certain standards that are expected and that in turn creates a bigger reservoir of those who are playing by the rules so I look at that on the one way as a driver but on the other hand you ask the question of a parent what do you want your child to be and 20 or 30 years ago you might have asked that to parents and they would have said I want my child to go into government because I think I can make the most money being in government in an ideal world and I think it is moving this way today when people ask that same thing they want their child to be in business the next Steve Jobs entrepreneur and if that change in culture is taking root at that level what is the aspiration and how do I get ahead then that's a very strong indicator but that needs to be complimented as it appears to be here in the Philippines with an understanding that there is an absolute commitment to driving the anti-corruption agenda both being able to put in place what you need when it happens to create a mechanism of enrichment so there is not impunity but even more important than that what can you be doing proactively in order to try to prevent corruption from happening before and we heard in one meeting yesterday a fantastic story of how a corrupt set of circumstances took place in Thailand and it was all completely predictable what would happen and at each of the steps along the way it could have been prevented had there been the means prosecuted so how do we move from being reactionary to being proactive and I think that's the fundamental question in the region and more broadly than just here I think there is a bi-side in the cell side in corruption and you really have to deal with both sides simultaneously and with the same degree of force sometimes we concentrate too much on the bi-side meaning talking about government officials being corrupt and so forth and we neglect the cell side as if the people who are thriving were forced to in my opinion they have a choice to they have a choice not to bribe and lose the business most businessmen would not like that choice but there is a choice so if that bi-side is taken care of you still have to take care of the cell side and vice versa so I feel that we haven't seen this a lot of pessimism is there and a lot of discussions I have privately people say it's impossible to rectify the situation and I would just like to for the purpose of everybody to think provoke this I'd like to just bring out one of my own experiences in 1973 I arrived in Hong Kong as a young man Hong Kong at that time in 1973 was probably at its height of corruption and as a corrupt society so bad that if you had a fire in a building the fire engines will arrive and the fire chief will jump down from this engine and say who's responsible here and start negotiating how much and if you cannot negotiate properly the fire engine will drive off and this is I'm not exaggerating it actually happens in Hong Kong way back in 72, 73 the whole police force was was corrupt to the core and if you have a clean good police man there's only one place you'll find him as the sentry at the main gate of the police headquarters because that's where nobody could actually bribe him he's just part letting the cars go in and out everybody else was corrupt but look at Hong Kong today there was a way a determination and within 10 years Hong Kong today can be rated as one of the cleanest place to do business in Asia so I do not think it's not solvable insurmountable it can be but it needs a lot of political resolve and courage and I hope like from Myanmar our president is showing that and I hope he survives President Xi Jinping is showing that I hope he survives too and so as you know examples like President Aquino and many others I think we just have to hope for the best in the world to survive especially in China and yeah go ahead I think it's also important to recognize the contributions coming from from multilateral as well as international organizations I mean many many fundamental changes in the Philippines for example the regulation privatization, the dismantling of monopolies and the development of market based policies and to a large extent being the influence of exogenous factors multilateral agencies that's why the Philippines has been very engaged with World Bank the Asian Development Bank in their efforts to promote a good governance or very recently the open government partnership which has now been at the you know with about 64 members vigorously pushing for transparency accountability and the engagement of the citizenry in governance I think we do have to recognize the importance of these partnerships because we do learn a lot from them in terms of the way they have with respecting cultures and context they've been able to effectively deal with with problems of corruption by leveraging technology for example by administrative or technical bureaucratic reforms that insulate regulatory agencies from capture they're very important exchanges that the Philippines wants to further cultivate especially at the regional level and that's why just recently we had the Bali conference hoping to activate further the open government partnership at the regional level so the cross-border efforts will help to change the culture and also establish the institution let's talk more about the institution may I raise a little bit of a provocative question to you maybe mainly to Steven and Dan is there some similarity between the lobbyism lobbying and also the chronic capitalism and corruption so is there a difference between lobbying and corruption well I would say the following I'd say that in the context of the United States lobbying as a concept is actually enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as a concept and what I mean by that is that the U.S. citizens can petition their elected officials to advocate for certain positions so there's always been the concept of advocacy and lobbying in the United States and if you look around the world in democracies you'll see very sophisticated increasingly sophisticated ways in which societies are advocating various positions I'd start with that and then I would say that in the case of the way in which the United States finances its campaigns because of the rules around at least listing what the payments are and what the campaign finances are I think that it is difficult to say that it's exactly bribery but I would say that it certainly is very controversial in the United States and raises a lot of issues but I think it raises issues larger issues around campaign finance necessarily because I'd say most politicians would say they're not taking a bribe if they're visited by a lobbyist who then six months later is participating in a fundraiser for them they would say well I don't that's not necessarily the case there have been cases egregious cases politicians have said okay if you give me this money there's a quid pro quo and they've gone to jail for that so there are laws there's transparency and there's also consequences for specific quid pro quo sorts of activities I think many of you including me have watched a very famous TV show which is the House of Cars this is true this is great public dependency in the United States the Baywatch for Washington so while it is true that the characters on that show live rather well the important distinction though as mentioned earlier was in principle what's going for the private benefit of a politician or of a decision maker or is a decision being made for the benefit of the state and its people and as you're making choices what's the motivation behind that particular choice and while there are certainly issues with how campaign finance and lobbying works in the US I think you could say with a reasonable degree of assurance that individual politicians are not pocketing cash that are coming as a result of their decisions for personal gain directly television show accepted on that one whereas what continues to concern us I think in many of the countries where there are less transparent activities a decision is made and someone has achieved personal gain for themselves or their family and at the same time that was not in the best interest of the country or if there was for example hospital equipment that wound up being diverted the funds that were meant to buy equipment and those funds wound up in someone's pocket that means that babies that were meant to have lived will die as a result so there are real consequences for corruption along the way and that often doesn't resonate with the people necessarily who are the beneficiaries thereof great then we will find some ways to set up a good institution also the integrity is the most important thing in all this our top of issues and I think because before we will open the floor to receive the questions from the audience maybe we can take a few minutes to sum up very quickly by naming one or two or maybe more the best practices when we try to create a culture of the transparency accountability and also fighting with the corruption and maybe what can young people do in all this France shall we start with the Asanga I think countries need to sort of move out from their national boundaries when they are fighting corruption you can't confine to sort of their own boundary look at it in a sort of nationalistic perspective but to move out from there and to have submit to regional integration and have regional frameworks to fight corruption that should be the way forward but young people can play a huge role in fighting corruption because the tools can be used by young people and in reporting bribery they can introduce new mechanisms to fighting bribery so I think overall there is sort of a huge role that the younger generation can play to fight corruption so also would you want to name to a best practices in your field or in your country one of the tools let me go to India for example, RT Right to Information Act in India that gave a huge boost to collect information from government officers, from politicians, from political financing so it has individual right of the citizen to question how much money did the suburb or the regional government use this is not still in Sri Lanka but I think that's a great success story in India so these amazing tools for example I introduced the I paid a bribe now I paid a bribe is a tool where individuals can report if you pay a bribe you can say I paid a bribe to so and so and it's a fun tool also but the quantification happens behind so they will know exactly by end of the year that which agencies were corrupt which places are corrupt so younger people can actually introduce these sort of tools to the others and you know spread the message across it's really important you too and Bernice so we just start with maybe very briefly so I think I'll focus on what youth can do in particular to drive this and I think a lot of the change in culture in many ways are initiated by youth so I think as young people we have the responsibility to actually drive this movement forward educate the market that put pressure on the government so you can only be elected to public office if you are promoting clean behavior in the country and a lot of the movements in Indonesia recently specifically on this effort in the last legislative election where we are trying to move towards track record base transparency based election and we actually try to educate people on the candidates themselves as opposed to becoming a popularity contest so I think there is a lot of activities that we can push on that side the second thing is also that the youth should also lead by example so it's not easy in the current environment but one movement that we have started as well in Indonesia is that let's just start with one day in a week where we decide that we are not going to take part in any of this bribery and activity and do everything cleanly and eventually as we go along it can go to do it every day and it gets a lot easier if you do it in stages but I think the last part that we'll also need help on is that transparency I think it's very important and it's not transparency on whether someone corrupt or not it's transparency of the result as I mentioned earlier as youth we need to get assurance that the government has the overall intention to eventually improve the public service level to the public and they are tracked and measured against that and only if we get that commitment that the real culture change will actually happen best practice pay civil servants well second move up on the doing business indicators reduce the amount of opportunities for corruption third introduce technologies such as the ones that were referenced earlier I paid a bribe or things like e-procurement in government and then fourth increase overall transparency in the budget making process such as that's been done here in the Philippines I just want to make one other point about the government side on the private sector side I think what Serge was saying earlier about there's a lot of focus on the government side of this conversation I do think there needs to be as much of a focus on the private sector side I think initiatives like Pachi here at the world economic forum they just launched something called the vanguard group of companies I think also speaks to that we have to raise the standards I think Steve was talking earlier about that this is happening through across supply chains around the world as well like Pachi subscribing to Pachi as well as the UN Global Compact there's been sort of a review of the member signatories of the UN Global Compact and they've removed several thousand of them and they're now at about 5,000 and what Georg Kale says is if he gets to about 20... I'm sorry you're going to have a final word I'll stop there it's too big a subject my final word is just that one out of two practices we have to stop do something very concrete on the sell side in other words on the business if you look at all the cases of prosecution it's always the government official the minister so-and-so going to jail for take a bribe well throw the guy who gave him a bribe with double sentence and I think a lot of people think twice whether to bribe or not because the government seven maybe compelled to take a bribe because it makes a change to his livelihood but the businessman who's giving a bribe to enrich himself more than he actually needs is the one that actually should go to jail twice as long so pay more attention to the sell side well in the Philippines what has worked is the state exerting strong leadership but at the same time working very closely with developing strong reform constituency for example in the business community they have what is called the integrity pledge in the case for example of the procurement of public works projects the department of public works and highways has worked with the for example the integrity initiative of the business community so that if you want to bid for projects you have to attach your income tax return if you don't then you cannot do things like this are from the effective or for example working with the environmental groups pursuing for example the national greening program of the government they have demanded that for all those long list of greening projects the department of environment must submit them in an excel spreadsheet and they have to have every project must have an ID and geotag so that they can monitor the progress of the project and some are even suggesting now that we use unmanned aerial vehicles drones to be able to see not just the usual financial and physical audits but this time around and which will be in the budget for next year visual audits so you can see you know if the farm to market road is being built or how many trees are being planted in a particular area and you can see the longitude latitudes of that and these are innovations coming from the private sector and from social movements that I think from which the government is benefitting a lot in terms of really promoting transparency and accountability in our program. I would pick up on a couple of things very quickly the patterns of corruption particularly on big projects are generally very well established and known if you have some expertise in this area it's not hard to figure out how it's done the question is do you do the homework in advance to be able to determine where the vulnerabilities are and then to stamp out those vulnerabilities before they happen as opposed to after the fact oh yet again another case of corruption let's go prosecute someone I would say let's go after whether it's the officials on one side or the enablers on the other side to stamp it out before it becomes another example. I think now it's time for us to open the floor to receive questions from the audience please identify who you are and to whom you would like to raise this question is there any questions yes please go ahead I'd like to address my question to Serge Pan and the example of Hong Kong is really a great case of creating an anti-corruption system that works and I know one of the things that they did was also do education in addition to the political commitment and the enforcement they educated even starting at the kindergarten level and so I'd like to ask you in terms of the region as a whole how can we do education better in terms of really moral values and ethics starting at the young age and even going to business schools so that those who are going to business have that ethos in them to be honest and not be corrupt thank you I think it's fairly easy if we were to include in the curriculum of all schools starting from very young something about how bad corruption is putting corruption at the same level as a health hazard as a cancer and they will grow up with a different concept of corruption rather than sometimes with the elderly today you just cannot get their mind around that life can go on without corruption but I think it is fairly easy to include the curriculum I don't know how many schools in the region or in the world today has a subject about corruption in their textbooks I would doubt it but that would be a very good suggestion I think Any more questions? Yes please I'm Trevor Moss with the Wall Street Journal my question for Secretary Abad is how can we be confident that the Philippines is really getting on top of corruption scandal going on right now the Port Barrel Scam which may now have implicated over a hundred congressmen and senators how can you convince foreign investors for example that the Philippines is really on top of this? Even I have been dragging into that controversy but I think if you look at the environment now the president has created a real open environment that allows people to freely speak about this problem which is not the case in the previous administrations but the president has not stopped there it has committed to prosecute all those involved regardless as to political color in fact the instruction to the Secretary of Justice is follow where the evidence leads you and let the axe fall where it should and I think that people doubt the president's commitment to do that so this environment has been created and so now you see a lot of people coming forward and exposing all sorts of anomalies at different levels of government and even the private sector and really I think at the end of the day the real challenge is how fast can the judicial process bring to justice all those cases that have proven to be with enough evidence for them to be convicted for corruption and I think this is the challenge that we are facing but certainly creating an environment and lowering tolerance for it is something that this administration will certainly allow to happen we at the Department of Budget management are also looking at this very positively because nowhere in the previous times has issues about public financial management being raised every day in national dailies and I think that's good for the country because then people are more conscious about the way public funds are being used and managed by government very a tough question and a very good answer I think we do have time for the final yes please please keep short the comment I really wanted to make is the discussion here primarily focused about private you pay and you take but I think we really have to see corruption in a much much wider scale we talk a little bit about the lobbying we talk a little bit about the other things there are many many other aspects of corruption and you know when we talk about I think there was a statistic given that the young people are saying this many percentage actually they don't only see the bribing as a corruption when that percentage somebody cited there a lot of young people will also see that having meetings in 5 star hotels they will see as a corruption you work in a social sector you come and sit in the 5 star hotel by the way I come from Red Cross corruption by young people that you could have done these things in a much better way so when we discuss this we really have to see the corruption in a much broader sense than just bribing, giving and taking that's the only point I wanted to make thank you very much corruption is more widespread and more kind of the characteristics we should work harder even harder fighting with it and now I think that we it's time for us to wrap up by asking you a final question which is what is the number one enemy in creating a transparency accountability culture and also the fighting with the corruption maybe we can start with young global leaders first yeah I think if you don't have the political will you're not going anywhere so that's key because in this in this region if you have enough money you get elected people who doesn't have money the percentage is very low so I think you need the political will that's number one because all the other sub I would say indexes are lying on this if you don't give the leadership if you don't give the courage to change your agencies enforce them so you're not going anywhere political will not to be complacent and to have courage and from the courage point of view to say that actually taking anti-corruption stance is advantageous for your business you may lose contracts in the short term but in the longer term you're going to be seen better in the light of the marketplace and that may sound naive but if that comes 20 years from now I think that trend line will be there well we've been asked you've started these things and we're reaping the benefits from it what happens after the president's term and my answer has always been well one is it depends on how you frame the 2016 elections if it is going to be a business as usual elections then there's a good chance that these reforms may be put aside but if we define it as election for continuity of these fundamental changes then I think people will develop a sense of urgency to think seriously about their choices in 2016 but I think on top of that what has been a very important factor in driving the changes as I said is the fact that you really have a disruptive state here and we'd like to see the same character reflected in the next state on the next administration that will run this country and I think that's really the challenge for the Filipino people thanks a lot Serge the question was what is the number one enemy to prevent eradication of corruption and also transparent accountability well I will second young global leaders whose long name I cannot pronounce that lack of political leadership and resolve is the biggest enemy leadership matters leadership I think ownership that this is also our job not only the job of other stakeholders ownership that's great and I think it's time for us to close the session I will share with you very quickly about the takeaways and I think that a lot of progress has been made in this region but there's no room for the complacency and also we should have the courage and also the cross-border efforts are needed the number one the political will and the political leadership and also at the same time the higher pay for this civil servants and also we have the courage and we have the tools and institutional the things to to block and to break the kind of corruption and also the colonialism and the this kind of psyche and also the culture and finally I think the young people the next generation of the leadership will have a bigger and a bigger role in fighting with the corruption and also with the new environment for the more transparency and more accountability and thank you so much for the great panel and also thank you for the great audience please join me with a big applause for thank you thank you very much when you come to Burma let me know thank you so much