In a lot of countries bribery is necessary on a daily basis, otherwise government officials can take literally hours to carry out simple requests. It seems to o

In a lot of countries bribery is necessary on a daily basis, otherwise government officials can take literally hours to carry out simple requests. It seems to occur when the person carrying out gets very little pay verses the value of the service they carry out to people using the service. For instance, it's quite common on land border crossings between developing countries to have to pay $2/3 for your passport to be checked, but that money only goes in the guy's pockets. It might not sound like a lot, but when you consider their daily wage may only be $10-15 and there are 100s of people crossing everyday, it works out quite well I'd expect. If you don't pay it might take them 30mins or more to check your passport or they find some minor problem and send you back wasting several days of your valuable time. Mostly in the cases I've seen in developing countries, is that you just bribing someone so they will actually do their job properly.