Paris:  Efforts to stop companies in advanced economies from bribing foreign officials to win contracts are improving, although a "disturbing" number of governments are still not keeping their commitments in this area, an advocacy group said in a report released Wednesday. The study from Transparency International said it was "very positive" that seven of 36 countries evaluated were actively enforcing the Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to which they were a party.

The convention was signed in 1997 and was enacted two years later. It commits signatories to make the bribing of foreign public officials a crime in the company's home country. Active enforcement is considered as having adequate rules and structures in place to deter foreign bribery.

The seven with best practice were Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Britain and the United States. Those countries, the report said, represent approximately 30 percent of world exports.

Since last year, three of those countries - Denmark, Italy and Britain - had improved.

Nine countries were considered to have "moderate enforcement" - still an inadequate deterrent - including France, Spain, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.

"The most disappointing finding is that there are still 20 countries - including G-8 member Canada - with little or no enforcement, representing about 15 percent of world exports," the report said.

Along with Canada, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Israel, Greece, Turkey and South Africa were cited in this group. "That number has shown little change in the last five years," the report said. "This is deeply disturbing because companies in these countries will feel little or no constraint about foreign bribery, and many are not even aware of the O.E.C.D. Convention."

"The current situation is unstable because the convention is predicated on the collective commitment of all the parties to end foreign bribery," it said. "Unless enforcement is sharply increased, existing support could well erode.

The hope for the convention is that Russia, China and India can eventually be drawn into signing. None of those three giant economies is yet a member of the organization. An area of concern is that Chinese companies in particular have been investing heavily in Africa in recent years, pushing for access to oil and minerals across the continent. African governments have eagerly accepted loans, in part because they are free of the conditions that international and Western lenders often attach.

Russia's important role in energy supply to Europe and the lack of transparency in the governance of many corporations is also a concern.

The report cited "danger signals" including efforts in some countries to limit the role of investigative magistrates, shorten statutes of limitations and extend immunities from prosecution.

It praised Britain's decision to enact a new antibribery law in April 2010 as a "crucial step" in updating antiquated laws. The law is expected to be enacted in April 2011. It also noted that during the last year, prosecutors in the United States, Germany and Britain settled a number of important foreign bribery cases in which the defendants agreed to pay fines amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some of the most important recent bribery investigations have been started by money laundering investigations - including those involving Siemens of Germany and Alstom of France. Here, the report said, Switzerland had "played a notable role."

France was criticized for having "several inadequacies" in its legal framework including the short duration of the statute of limitation, three years.

A total of 38 countries have ratified the convention; Iceland and Luxembourg are among them, but were not part of the Transparency International study.