This study was composed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), but it was financed by the Directorate-General of Enlargement of  the European Commission. In this study 12 700 comapanies participated.

The main conclusions are the following:

According to the opinion of examinees from the bussines sector, corruption is the third largest barrier to management in this region. In average, 10% of private enterprises had paid bribes in the past 12 months.

The ways of bribery are different among countries: most of the private enterprises were bribed (in last 12 months) in Serbia (17%) and Albania (15,7%), meanwhile in Croatia there is present paying bribes by private enterprises. On the region basis, 35,7% of bribes are paid to civil servants in cash, then follows food and drink (33,6%).

Frequency of bribery is higher among small enterprises,but  also in those with larger share of foreign capital.

Constructional sector is deeply affected, where 12,2% of examinees declared that they paid bribes to civil servanst, then follows wholesale and retail (10,3%) also, transport and storage (9,9%).

Most of the share of bribes are paid to servants in self-government and public service stuff working in field of taxes and costums.

The most frequent reason of bribery is „accelerating business procedures“ (40,3%),then follows „better treat-man“ (14%) and „enabling ending of process“ (12,7%).

To sum up, corruption represents an important barrier to the economic development of the region. Observing the region in whole, 5,9% of private enterprises decided NOT to undertake larger investment because they expect that they would have to commit bribery.

UNODC 2013