ICAC advocates 'house rules' on business ethics
DESPITE an 11 per cent increase in corruption reports, private-sector companies are slow to set up in-house codes of ethics.
Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) Community Relations Regional Officer, Esther Tsu Yuen-tsu, said only half of the firms and companies they approached were willing to make the move to safeguard business ethics.
Since October the ICAC has tried to persuade company managers to form their own 'house rules' in an attempt to curb the increase in private-sector corruption.
Ms Tsu said that out of the 475 listed companies approached, only 237 ran a company code. Slightly more than half of the 557 major companies had formulated rules while less than half of the 257 trade associations had acquired a code.
Director of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Ian Christie, said there was a global trend for multi-nationals to develop codes of conduct to cover ethical and legal problems in making business deals and to prevent corruptions among employees.
However, he believed that Hong Kong companies were slow to join the trend because of the China factor.
'Part of the problem comes from being business partners with China. Some Hong Kong companies might feel disadvantaged if they have a code of practice,' Mr Christie said.
A code of conduct enables employees to be aware of the legal and ethical questions in regard to offering and accepting advantages, insider trade, conflicts of interest and the use of privileged information.
Although only half of the companies encountered had introduced a code of conduct, the figure was still encouraging, Ms Tsu said.
She believed that the remaining firms would eventually follow suit once they had solved some technical problems.
'Many companies have different subsidiaries and departments of very different natures. They may have problems in operating one code within the entire corporation,' she said.
The latest ICAC statistics show an 11 per cent rise in reports on corruption. Until October this year, there were 3,022 corruption cases, compared with 2,731 in the same period last year.
In the private sector, bribery was the highest statistic with 1,543 cases in the first 10 months of this year, compared with 1,472 last year.
Ms Tsu said that the increase was attributed to a thriving economy in the territory which had unfortunately provided more opportunities for corruption.
