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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistan improves ranking to become 46th most corrupt country |
| 2008-09-24 |
| Pakistan improved slightly its ranking on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released on Tuesday, and is now the 46th most corrupt country in the world. "Pakistan has improved its ranking jumping from 138th of 180 countries to 134th, but the government still needs to save the country from a disaster," Transparency International Chairman Adil Gillani said during a press conference at the Karachi Press Club. The CPI measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in a country and is a composite index based on surveys among experts and businessmen. The 2008 CPI scored 180 countries on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to ten (highly clean). For the second year running, Somalia, Myanmar and Iraq received the poorest marks, with Somalia scoring 1.0 and Myanmar and Iraq scoring 1.3 each. Denmark retained its ranking as the world's least corrupt nation, alongside Sweden and New Zealand. All scored 9.3. "An analysis of Pakistan and India's CPIs for the last 10 years shows a strongly inverse relationship between perceived corruption levels and the economy," Gillani added. "In 1998, Pakistan and India's reserves were at $1.6 billion and $26 billion respectively and in 2008 they are at $9.1 billion and $237 billion respectively," Gillani said, adding that besides an increase in the gap of foreign reserves of Pakistan and India, Pakistan's trade deficit has also increased manifold. Gillani said that despite ratifying the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) on August 9, 2007, Pakistan has not initiated any reform to ease out the regulatory burden of doing business in the last one year. "The country needs immediate enforcement of good governance and a transparent administration to counter the acute problems of terrorism, hyperinflation, reduction of the KSE-100 index, the 20-percent devaluation in currency and the increase in the dollar's value from Rs 64 to Rs 77 due to the bad governance during the last 10 years," he said. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 So is that better or worse than Louisiana? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-09-24 17:39 |