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LONDON: The Philippines is the 131st most corrupt
country in the world, tied with Burundi, Honduras, Iran, Libya,
Nepal Yemen, according to a survey released Wednesday.
Berlin-based Transparency
International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index
covering 180 countries that some of the world’s poorest nations
were seen as having the most dishonest political and business
elites.
In Southeast Asia, three
countries were perceived as more corrupt than the
Philippines–Indonesia, number 143; Cambodia, at 160; and Myanmar,
the second-most corrupt, at 179.
Only Singapore made it to the top
10 least corrupt in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, Transparency reported
that sleaze is hobbling the recovery of war-ravaged countries like
Iraq and Somalia, which joined Myanmar among states perceived as the
world’s most corrupt.
But the group said that even
countries believed to be the least corrupt—named this year as
Denmark, Finland and New Zealand—needed to do more to combat
corporate graft.
“It is not just a problem of
the poor countries, rich and poor nations share heavy
responsibility, said Huguette Labelle, chairwoman of the respected
organization.
“The top scorers, the wealthy
countries, are often complacent . . . bribe money often originates
in the top scorers, the wealthy countries,” she told a press
conference in London.
The index score relates to
perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people
and country analysts. It ranges between zero, which is highly
corrupt, and 10, which is very clean.
On the 2006 list, the worst
levels of perceived corruption were in Haiti, Myanmar, Iraq and
Guinea.
The Philippines’ score is 2.5.
Transparency International has
frequently noted that because the index is based on subjective
assessments, the fact that Iraq had such a low rating may be linked
to the bigger international profile of the country since the US-led
invasion in 2003 and the huge influx of reconstruction funds.
It continued to find a strong
link between poverty and graft with 40 percent of the countries
scoring below three this year—indicating that corruption is
considered to be rampant—classified by the World Bank as
low-income states.
--AFP with The Manila Times
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