ISLAMABAD
Pakistan has gone further up in the list of most corrupt nations, receiving an index score of 2.3 this year against 2.4 in 2009, a report on Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) issued by Transparency International (TI) said on Tuesday.
The report said of the total 178 countries, Pakistan’s ranking had dropped seven places, from the 42nd most corrupt country in 2009 to the 34th-worst country in 2010. The report said around three quarters of the 178 countries in the index scored below five on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have low levels of corruption), indicating a “serious corruption problem”.
TI Pakistan Chairman Syed Adil Gillani said that during the past two years, unprecedented cases of corruption had been reported, involving embezzlements of tens of billions of rupees in the public sector, which under the rule of law, should have been taken up by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).
He said the political will of the government to fight corruption lacked badly, which resulted in the Supreme Court of Pakistan taking suo moto actions against mega corruption in the NICL, Pakistan Steel Mills and the rental power plants.
The CPI 2010 revealed that corruption in Pakistan was on the rise, while corruption in Bangladesh was on the way down. The TI chairman said the Supreme Court of Pakistan, in its order of October 12, 2010, had declared that six procurements with regard to the NICL case No 18 of 2010 was in violation of Public Procurement Rules, 2004 and declared them a criminal act.
It was a landmark order, he said, treating violation of Public Procurement Rules, 2004, as a federal crime and “it will help reduce corruption”. Gillani said across the board application of the rule of law, merit-based appointments and easy access to justice was the only solution to save Pakistan from corruption, which was responsible for poverty, inflation, terrorism, illiteracy, and lack of electricity and hoarding of essential food commodities.
Although Bangladesh was perceived to be the most corrupt country until 2003, its ranking in 2010 was 39th, he said. Gillani said that reduced corruption had paid dividends to Bangladesh, whose annual GDP growth last year was over five percent, while Pakistan’s GDP growth last year was around 2.4 percent.
Delay in the formation of an independent accountability commission by parliament might further aggravate the situation, he added. The TI chairman said the direct impact of increased corruption was witnessed in the rise in the prices of food commodities, which according to official data, have increased up to 120 percent in last one year.
Foreign direct investment for the fiscal year 2009-2010 dropped to $2.21 billion from $3.71 billion in 2008-2009. The country’s foreign debt increased from $40 billion in 1999 to $46 billion in 2008, whereas, it increased to $53.5 billion in the last two years.
