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134 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
in preventing corruption and enabling the national program to reach its
goals. Indeed, risk factors for corruption include all of the following:
• The very speed of program development
• The extent of decentralization
• Questions about the lack of staff, experience, and skills at lower levels
• The substantially increased activity and money being invested in the
sector.
Rural Water Supply Corruption in Ethiopia
Policy Making and Regulation
Corrupt practices may occur at the policy-making level within the public
sector. Politicians and officials responsible for water sector policies might
seek to influence the focus of policy (that determines investment priorities)
to set up future opportunities for rent seeking. In turn, regulators can
be bought by politicians and other stakeholders to determine standards
and regulations (regulatory capture) or to allow projects to bypass established
standards or procedures.
At higher levels of government, such corruption is typically opaque
and complex, but distortions in the allocation of resources are achieved
only by collaboration within water departments and between line departments
such as financing and planning (Plummer and Cross 2007).
Risk: low to medium. The available evidence from Ethiopia, and the
perceptions of water sector stakeholders, indicates that corruption risk at
this level is generally low to medium. Table 4.2 summarizes the findings
of the study team and the views of workshop participants on some of the
key issues.
Few opportunities for rent seeking at the policy-making level appear to
exist for politicians in the rural water sector in Ethiopia because funding
mechanisms and prioritization are reasonably systemized, transparent, and
rules-based (as discussed in further detail below). However, adherence to
sector policies and strategies appears to vary by region, dependent partly
on resource allocations and partly on the degree to which knowledge
about sector policies and priorities filters down to lower levels of government.
10 At the regulatory level, there is good to excellent compliance.
Role of state-owned drilling companies. One potential area of concern
is the position of the government-owned drilling companies favored for