Five tools for reducing corruption during COVID-19
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In addition to sparking a global health, economic, and education crisis, the coronavirus pandemic may be fueling a fourth crisis that has, thus far, not gotten the attention it deserves.
Just as the global pandemic has illuminated the vulnerabilities in our health, economic, and education systems, it is shining a spotlight on the gaps, gaffes, and weaknesses in the management of public finances. Reports cite secret contracts for COVID-19 vaccines, inflated prices for supplies, and corruption in the spending of relief funds.
Certainly, weak governance, poor public financial management, and misuse of public funding and public goods is not a new problem. But the pandemic has given it new urgency. That’s because, governance failures, including the misuse and mismanagement of COVID-19 funding, has the potential to undermine pandemic response efforts in three key ways – none of which we can afford right now: (1) infla