On Thursday, Transparency International, a Berlin-based non-profit organization, working to combat global corruption, released its annual index Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2020. Pakistan’s rank has dropped in the index even further. It has scored 31 out of 100 on a scale of 0 being highly corrupt to 100 as very clean and was ranked 124 out of the total 180 countries.
According to Transparency International Pakistan’s chairman, Sohail Muzaffar, Pakistan scored 32 out of 100 in 2019 and that score has dropped to 31 in 2020. Similarly, Pakistan’s position has dropped to 124 in 2020 in contrast to 120 in 2019, out of the total 180 countries, despite the National Accountability Bureau’s (NAB) tireless efforts to eradicate corruption in Pakistan.
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“This is despite the extraordinary efforts of NAB, which claims to have recovered Rs. 363 billion in the last two years and Public Accounts Committee claims to have recovered Rs. 300 billion in the last two years,” stated Mr. Muzaffar.
He further informed that Pakistan’s rank has also deteriorated in two other sources; the Rule of Law Index and Varieties of Democracy (VDem). He quotes this as the reason for Pakistan’s decline by 1 point in the Corruption Perception Index of 2020. The government of Pakistan must prioritize these areas and work on their betterment, he added.
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“The past year has tested governments like no other in memory, and those with higher levels of corruption have been less able to meet the challenge. But even those at the top of the CPI must urgently address their role in perpetuating corruption at home and abroad,” Chair of Transparency International, Delia Ferreira Rubio stated.
The Corruption Perception Index of 2020 ranks all 180 countries according to their corruption level in the public sector, generating information from 13 surveys of business executives and expert assessments.
Countries like South Korea, Myanmar, Guyana, Greece, Ecuador, and 21 others have shown significant improvements in the Corruption Perception Index since 2012. While on the other hand, Poland, Malta, Lebanon, and 19 other countries saw a decrease in their scores.
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