Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira on Friday said the Transparency International’s report stating Pakistan as one of the most corrupt nations was fabricated, baseless and a pack of lies as it put corruption in Pakistan even more than the country’s annual budget.
He said the report had depicted daily corruption of Rs 7 billion with its annual volume of Rs 25.20 trillion in the country, which was the strongest evidence to prove its irrationality and falseness.
He said the Transparency International had modified its method this year and that the current score was incomparable with that of previous year. Likewise, the comparison between Pakistan’s 33rd rank with 42nd of previous year was illogical.
Kaira said no country maintained the same score every year as of the total of 176 countries, around two-third countries had obtained a below-50 score manifesting that increase in corruption was a global phenomenon.
However, more corruption in South Asian states was worrisome as Nepal stood at 139 in the list, and Bangladesh and Afghanistan followed it depicting that the whole region was crippled with corruption.
He said the situation needed to be addressed by the civil society, the media, the business community and the government using various techniques.
The information minister said even the countries located at the heart of the Euro Zone had been showing dismal progress on the Consumer Price Index.
He said the world’s top 85 multinational companies did not show their tax invoices on their corporate website. Kaira said at the parliamentary level, the Public Accounts Committee was actively working and for the first time in the country’s history, the opposition leader in the National Assembly was appointed as its chairman that manifested the government’s commitment to eliminating corruption.
He said the PAC had recovered Rs 180 billion indiscriminately that was also lauded by the Transparency International as it had helped reduce corruption, but now through this report, the TI was negating its own stance.
He said the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) were working at the federal level while anti-corruption departments were performing at the provincial level, which had also recovered embezzled amounts and acted against the responsible people.
Kaira said the judiciary and the media were functioning independently in the country and the courts had also taken suo motu notices on the basis of media reports, several of those had been disposed of and plenty of others were sub-judice.
“It is a fact that the graph of corruption has come down owing to efficient performance of NAB and the FIA as well as court cases,” he said.
Kaira said the TI had no mechanism in Pakistan to detect corruption, adding that its findings were based on guesses and concocted figures carrying no truth.
Transparency’s report baseless, pack of lies: Kaira
