Results of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2017 continue to show a high variance in public sector corruption across the Asia-Pacific region, according to a global coalition fighting corruption.
The latest CPI, released February 21, 2018 by Transparency International, gives Asia-Pacific an average score of just 44, a failing grade, with more than half of the countries scoring less than 50.
“With a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 means very clean and 0 reflects a deep-rooted, systemic corruption problem, the Asia Pacific countries, on average, are failing,” said the organization.
Top scorers include New Zealand (with 89) and Singapore (84), while some of the worst scorers are Cambodia (21), North Korea (17), and Afghanistan (15).
“Our analysis reveals little progress across the region. In the last six years, only a few countries experienced small, incremental changes indicating signs of improvement,” the paper said.
Afghanistan moved from a very low 8 in 2015 to 15 in 2016 and 2017, which may be attributed to some initial efforts nationwide to improve key policies, including better regulation of national procurement activities.
Similarly, Indonesia has moved from 32 to 37 in the last five years, an overall increase of five points. This slight improvement could stem from the work of Indonesia’s leading anti-corruption agency in taking action against corrupt individuals, despite strong opposition from the government and parliament.
Other countries, like South Korea (with a score of 54), remain fairly stable in their scores over the last six years. South Korea experienced recent high-profile corruption scandals, which led to massive public protests and the swift impeachment and prosecution of the president.
But the study said the results from the 2017 index also show that corruption in many countries is still strong. “Often, when individuals dare to challenge the status quo, they suffer the consequences. In some countries across the region, journalists, activists, opposition leaders and even staff of law enforcement or watchdog agencies are threatened, and in the worst cases, even murdered.”
The Philippines (having a score of 34), India (40), and Maldives (33) are among the worst regional offenders in this respect, it added. “These countries score high for corruption and have fewer press freedoms and higher numbers of journalist deaths.”
Of the other countries and territories in the region, Hong Kong has a CPI score of 77, Japan 73, Taiwan 63, Brunei Darussalam 62, Malaysia 47, China 41, Sri Lanka 38, Thailand 37, Vietnam 35, Myanmar 30, and Laos 29.
The CPI 2017 was calculated using 13 different data sources from 12 different institutions that captured perceptions of corruption within the past two years.
These included the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index 2017-2018, Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Service 2017, IMD World Competitiveness Center World Competitiveness Yearbook Executive Opinion Survey 2017, Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence 2017, The PRS Group International Country Risk Guide 2017, World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment 2017, World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2017, and World Justice Project Rule of Law Index Expert Survey 2017-2018.
Photo: Jaime La Provence
