Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Unacceptable! Malaysia's score in TI corruption index slipping further

Datuk Seri Nazir Razak: "Malaysia must overcome corruption and carry out more market-oriented reforms if it is to move up from being a middle-income economy."

Nazir said this during an interview with Financial Times, and admitted that corruption remains a problem, and it is something that needs to be combated. It is easy to concur with a man of his calibre. But wait, if taking one's opinion is hard for you, just look at the following statistics made available by Transparency International.

Nazir with FT
* Datuk Seri Nazir. Photo credit: The Malaysian Insider


Corruption perception index slipping for the fourth year running

Malaysia’s score in Transparency International’s corruption perception index is slipping for the fourth year running; on a 10-point scale, where 10 represents no corruption, Malaysia dropped from 5.1 in 2008 to 4.3 in 2011? One can always argue about the methodology used in obtaining these figures, but this can at least give us some indicators:

2008 : 5.1 out of possible 10.
2009 : 4.5
2010 : 4.4
2011 : 4.3   [By comparison, Singapore index is 9.2]

The country’s ranking also fell to 60 out of 183 countries — between Saudi Arabia and Cuba — from 56 out of 178 last year. Malaysia remained the third-least corrupt nation in Asean after Singapore (9.2) and Brunei (5.2), with Thailand (3.4) and Indonesia (3.0) following in fourth and fifth places respectively.

If you ask me for figure, I'd say 3 to 4 but this is purely based on perception. No hard facts and don't ask me to show one. Perception is derived from daily experience and impression so these are all subjective.

What do you think?


Reference:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/litee/print/malaysia/corruption-blocking-malaysias-leap-into-higher-income-status-says-nazir-razak/

No comments: