Almost half of Libyan respondents in Transparency International's latest global survey thought corruption had risen over the past two years, with over 60% saying they had paid a bribe to a basic public institution.

The latest edition of the Global Corruption Barometer, published annually by Transparency International, found that 29% of respondents thought corruption had increased "a lot" over the past two years, with 17% saying it had increased "a little".

Some 23% thought that corruption levels had stayed the same, with 31% saying they had gone down.

The survey interviewed 1,000 people nationwide between September 2012 and March this year. They were asked a range of questions about perceptions of bribery and corrupt practices.

A striking 62% of respondents said they had paid a bribe to one of eight basic public services, such as the tax office, the police or utilities providers, a figure that was only surpassed by Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Yemen.

More than half of those who paid the bribes in Libya gave their reason as being that "it was the only way to obtain a service," with three-quarters of all respondents saying that they had been asked to pay a bribe at some point.

In other areas there were more positive perceptions. In answering whether they thought the government was run "by a few big entities acting in their own best interests', only 36% thought that this was "entirely" or "to a large extent" true.

This was amongst the lowest figures polled on that issue in any country, although almost half of Libyans thought that the government's efforts to control corruption were "ineffective".

Public officials, civil servants and the police were considered the most corrupt institution in Libya, according to the poll, with NGOs and private-sector business deemed to be the least corrupt.

Some 70% of Libyans polled said they would not report an incident of corruption - amongst the highest ratios of any country in the survey - with half of those respondents giving the reason that they would be "afraid of the consequences."

The most popular response to a question about preferred ways of fighting corruption was to spend more money with companies that were corruption-free, or to raise awareness of the problem through social media.

Transparency's other major corruption survey, the Corruption Perceptions Index, rated Libya 160th out of 174 countries last year.