Indonesia is Asia's 46th most corrupt nation: Survey
Indonesia is Asia's 46th most corrupt nation: Survey
BERLIN (AFP): Pakistan is the most corrupt Asian nation for the second year running and Singapore the most honest, according to a survey released here.
Indonesia is in the 46th place.
But Pakistan made the most effort to improve its record, and actually jumped several places in the corruption league table of 52 countries, 13 of them Asian.
Researchers claim striking success for their league tables: they say the 1996 version partly contributed to the fall of Benazir Bhutto's government in Pakistan and directly prompted a government drive in Malaysia to stamp out corruption.
Nigeria was judged overall to be the most corrupt country in the world, again for the second year running, followed by Bolivia, Colombia and Russia.
Denmark was the best overall.
The third annual study by Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization based in Berlin, draws on surveys of business chiefs and politicians to compile its data.
The researchers stressed that they only included countries on which they could get enough information. Their table gives countries scores out of 10.
After Singapore, in ninth place overall, Hong Kong was the most honest place (18), followed by Japan (21), Taiwan (31), Malaysia (32) and South Korea (34).
Asia provides seven of the worst 14 nations. After Pakistan in 48th place is, from the bottom up, Indonesia (46), India (45), Vietnam -- a new entry at 43 -- China (41), the Philippines (40) and Thailand (39).
Because of lack of details, only two African countries are included on the list at all, Nigeria and South Africa, leaving notoriously corrupt nations such as the former Zaire out of sight.
Similarly, Bangladesh was judged the fourth most corrupt country last year, but was not included in this year's table for lack of data.
"There are many nations not included in the listing which would be seen as more corrupt than some on it, but we did not have enough information to include them," said Johann Graf Lambsdorff, who led the research team.
But while western countries dominated the honest end of the scale, western multi-nationals were often to blame for corruption elsewhere in the world, TI president Peter Eigen said.
"Much of the corruption is a direct consequence of multi- national firms based in industrialized countries who do not hesitate to hand out generous bribes to obtain contracts in developing nations," he said.