LONDON (Reuters):

Corruption is rife and rising in business dealings across the world despite changing laws and greater resistance from companies to demands for bribes, a survey said on Monday.

The annual global corruption survey by international consul-tancy Control Risks and law firm Simmons & Simmons found that nearly half of businesses contacted said they had lost a deal because a competitor had paid a bribe.

The worst-affected country was Hong Kong, where 76 per cent of companies said they had lost a deal for that reason in the past five years. One in three French companies said they had lost out through bribery in the past year alone.

International issue

"Our survey shows that corrup-tion continues to be a huge international issue and honest companies are still losing out to dishonest competitors on a large scale," Control Risks consultant John Bray said.

And while laws were changing and companies were beginning to fight back, more of the 350 business leaders in seven countries that took part in the survey said they thought corruption would get worse rather than better for the rest of the decade.

The worst-affected sectors were oil, gas and construction, where project values were often very high and where relatively minor officials on low pay and possibly susceptible to bribery were in positions of considerable power, the survey said.

"Companies across the globe are starting to fight back against corrupt practices," Bray said. "But it is clear there is still a long way to go before corruption becomes a thing of the past."