Eight steps down

Pakistan is ranked 34th on the global list of countries perceived to be the most corrupt in the world.

Pakistan is ranked 34th on the recently released Transparency International global list of countries perceived to be the most corrupt,  falling by eight places in one year.

“The score of Pakistan is 2.3 in corruption perceptions index and Pakistan is standing on 34th position in the list of most corrupt countries,” Transparency International Pakistan chairman Adil Gillani said at a press conference in Karachi on Tuesday.

Transparency International’s annual survey, which looks at 178 countries, ranges from zero (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (thought to have little corruption).

In 2009, Pakistan’s corruption perceptions index score was 2.4.  The country slipped five places from 47 in 2008 to 42 in 2009.

India worsened by 0.1, going from 3.4 in 2009 to 3.3 in 2010, while Iraq was fourth from the top of the most corrupt ranking country. Myanmar shared second place with Afghanistan and lawless Somalia was considered the world’s most corrupt country, with a score of 1.1.

At the other end of the scale, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore were seen as the nations which are the least corrupt, scoring 9.3 points.  They were followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands.

The US was 22nd on the list, while Greece and Italy came in at 78th and 67th, respectively. China was level with Greece.

“These results signal that significantly greater efforts must go into strengthening governance across the globe. Good governance is an essential part of the solution to the global policy challenges governments face today,” said Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency International in a statement.

However, some experts are sceptical of the survey. “Corruption perceptions will be shaped strongly by what people see or hear in the media, as well as by their own experiences,” Karachi-based economist Haris Gazdar, a senior researcher at Collective for Social Science Research told The Express Tribune.

In this year’s survey, Transparency International Pakistan took the opinions of 5,200 people, which is considered an adequate sample size to gauge the views of the 177 million-strong population of the country. However, it is said that the sample data is not representative and there is a “selection bias”. The TIP survey is silent on the sampling issue and only states that it has used “random sampling”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27th, 2010.