Bribery killing trade in Ivory Coast

According to the local head of the Chamber of Commerce, Ivory Coast loses as much as $600 million per year in petty corruption – bribes to border officials and illegal gangs; under the table payments to politicians; the occasional stack of bills to grease civil servants to look the other way.  That's just under twice what the country received in foreign aid in 2004. 

More aid isn’t going to fix the problem, but self-implemented reforms to reduce corruption and enable trade to flow more freely certainly would.