Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia are seen as
the
world’s most corrupt countries while
Denmark and New Zealand are nearly squeaky-clean, with Nigeria ranked 144th,
graft watchdog Transparency International said in a survey Tuesday.
Worldwide,
almost 70 percent of nations are thought to have a “serious problem” with
public servants on the take, and none of the 177 countries surveyed this year
got a perfect score, said the Berlin-based non-profit group.
Transparency
International’s annual list is the most widely used indicator of sleaze in
political parties, police, justice systems and civil services, a scourge which
undermines development and the fight against poverty.”Corruption hurts the poor
most,” lead researcher Finn Heinrich told AFP.
“That’s
what you see when you look at the countries at the bottom. Within those
countries, it’s also poor people who get hurt the most. These countries will
never get out of the poverty trap if they don’t tackle corruption.”
Among
countries that have slipped the most on the group’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions
Index are war-torn Syria as well as Libya and Mali, which have also faced major
military conflict in recent years.
“Corruption
is very much linked to countries that fall apart, as you see in Libya, Syria,
two of the countries that deteriorated the most,” said Heinrich.
“If
you look at the bottom of the list, we also have Somalia there. These are not
countries where the government is functioning effectively, and people have to
take all means in order to get by, to get services, to get food, to survive.”
Heinrich
said Afghanistan, where most NATO-led Western forces are pulling out next year
after a more than decade long deployment, is “a sobering story. We have not
seen tangible improvements”.
“The
West has not only invested in security but also in trying to establish the rule
of law. But there have been surveys in the last couple of years showing the
share of people paying bribes is still one of the highest in the world.”
Also
at the bottom of the list is North Korea, “an absolutely closed totalitarian
society”, said Heinrich, where defectors report that famine is worsening
corruption “because you have to know someone in the party who is corrupt in
order to even survive”.
Among
the “most improved” countries, although from a low base, was Myanmar, where a
former military junta has opened the door to the democratic process and, facing
an investment boom, has formally committed to transparency and accountability
rules.
“That’s
the only way countries can avoid the ‘resource curse’, where the resources are
only available to a very small elite,” said Heinrich. “Nigeria and other
oil-rich countries are obviously very good examples.”
Huguette
Labelle, chair of Transparency, said “all countries still face the threat of
corruption at all levels of government, from the issuing of local permits to
the enforcement of laws and regulations”.
The
group says that because corruption is illegal and secretive, it cannot be
meaningfully measured.
Instead
Transparency collates expert views on the problem from bodies such as the World
Bank, African Development Bank, Economist Intelligence Unit, Bertelsmann
Foundation, Freedom House and other groups.
It
then ranks countries on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means a country’s public
sector is considered highly corrupt and 100 means its is regarded as very
clean.
The
latest survey “paints a worrying picture”, said Transparency. “While a handful
perform well, not one single country gets a perfect score. More than two-thirds
score less than 50.”
The
bottom-ranked countries, scoring 10 to 19, included Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan
and South Sudan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Yemen.
At
the top, between 80 and 89, aside from Denmark and New Zealand, were
Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Singapore, Norway,
Sweden and Finland.
“The
top performers clearly reveal how transparency supports accountability and can
stop corruption,” said Labelle.
“Still,
the better performers face issues like state capture, campaign finance and the
oversight of big public contracts which remain major corruption risks.”
The
following is a list of the top- and bottom-ranked 10 nations on graft watchdog
Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index, released on
Tuesday.
The
index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by
country analysts and business people and ranges between zero, which is highly
corrupt, and 100, which is very clean.
(The
equals symbol means nations share the same rank)
TOP
TEN
=1.
Denmark 91
=1.
New Zealand 91
=3.
Finland 89
=3.
Sweden 89
=5.
Norway 86
=5.
Singapore 86
7.
Switzerland 85
8.
Netherlands 83
=9.
Australia 81
=9.
Canada 81
BOTTOM
TEN
=168.
Syria 17
=168.
Turkmenistan 17
=168.
Uzbekistan 17
171.
Iraq 16
172.
Libya 15
173.
South Sudan 14
174.
Sudan 11
=175.
Afghanistan 8
=175.
North Korea 8
=175.
Somalia 8
[AFP]
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Tuesday, December 03, 2013
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