Corruption fades at a snails pace

2011 surely is the year of uprising. From the beginning, the world saw protests, strikes and disobedience against corruption and suppression-the wave which started from the Africa and Arab league spread all across the globe, including India and the Wall Street. Transparency International (IT) is one organisation that attempts to scale up the menace of corruption that has the potential of instigating civil wars and breaking nations. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) allots a corruption score to each country, taking into consideration bribery in the public sector, kick backs received by government officials in procurement, misuse of funds by the government, etc. In 2011 New Zealand, Denmark and Finland were ranked the best when it comes to public sector corruption, their scores averaged around 9.4. Whereas Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia were the worst with average score of 1.25. From a score of 2.3 in 2010 and 2.4 in 2009, Pakistans current score definitely shows an improvement. In fact, digging into the data deeply reveals that Pakistan has actually improved relative to seven countries which were better off than Pakistan on the CPI last year. From being the 34th most corrupt out of 178 countries in 2010, Pakistan was the 42nd most corrupt out of 183 this year. According to Chairman TI Pakistan, Sohail Muzaffar, the good performance of Public Accounts Committee (PAC), zero tolerance of corruption in judiciary and the efforts by the Ministry of Defence to put into affect the PPRA rules in the military are the main contributors to the better ranking. However, before celebrating the improvement in scores, a regional comparison shows that Pakistan has a lot of catching up to do. While it was the 3rd most corrupt in South Asia in 2010, it became the 2nd most corrupt in 2011, with Iran outdoing Pakistan this year (see table). While the improvement this year does indicate a positive development, efforts need to be taken to sustain it and keep up the good work in the years to come. Complacency with this years scores should not be the order of the day.