Bharti Airtel, a leading global telecommunication services provider with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, has been ranked fourth in a listing of 100 emerging market multinational companies as part of a study on corporate transparency and reporting by Transparency International.
The study Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing Emerging Market Multinationals(http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/emerging_market_multinational_companies_ready_for_prime_time)assesses the corporate reporting practices of 100 large multinational companies from emerging markets. These rapidly expanding companies, identified as rising stars of the world economy, come from 16 different countries.
The Companies were ranked on three parameters:
Reporting on anti-corruption programmes: covering inter alia bribery, facilitation payments, whistleblower protection and political contributions.
Organisational transparency: including information about corporate holdings.
Country-by-country reporting: including revenues, capital expenditure and tax payments.
Bharti Airtel scored 85% on Reporting on anti-corruption programmes against an average score of 46%. The score for Organisational Transparency was 75% vs the average score of 54% and for Country-by-Country reporting it was 34% vs the average of 9%.
According to Transparency International, the growing importance of emerging markets means their impact is felt broadly around the world. Thus it is important companies from emerging markets do all they can to stop corruption from being a part of their business. As markets become global, the ethical and transparency standards of companies must become higher and more universally applied.
Transparency International is the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption. Through more than 90 chapters worldwide and an international secretariat in Berlin, it raises awareness of the damaging effects of corruption and work with partners in government, business and civil society to develop and implement effective measures to tackle it.
