JOIN USCorruption impeding FDI inflow to India: Study
Releasing the global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) survey, 2009, TI India chairman Admiral (retd) R H Tahiliani said India’s position in the survey covering 180 nations virtually remains the same, with its CPI score static at 3.4 on a scale of 0-10 and rank minutely improving from 85 in 2008 to 84 this year.
The TI survey was on public sector corruption, and “the country continues to be perceived as highly corrupt by experts and business surveys,” TI India said.
“The perception of being corrupt impacts the FDI inflow. Being a developing country, India attracts reasonable FDI, it could attract more if it would have been perceived to be less corrupt,” Tahiliani said.
Giving India company in the 84th rank are El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama and Thailand. According to the survey, the top three least corrupt countries are New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore with CPI scores of 9.4, 9.3 and 9.2 respectively. The most corrupt countries, according to the survey, are Somalia (CPI score 1.1), Afghanistan (1.3), Myanmar (1.4), Sudan and Iraq (both 1.5) in that order.
The only consolation for India is that in South Asia, only Bhutan is least corrupt than India, with a CPI score of 5.0 and a rank of 49 in the overall list.
After Afghanistan, Nepal has emerged as the most corrupt in the region (CPI score 2.3, rank 143), followed by Pakistan and Bangladesh (2.4 each, rank 139), the Maldives (2.5, rank 130) and Sri Lanka (3.1, rank 97). The TI survey draws on 13 different expert and business surveys in all the countries.
Linking public sector corruption to the growth of the country, Tahiliani said if despite the 6 per cent economic growth, the overall growth has not been inclusive and has left out vast multitudes of people, it was only because of corruption.
He said TI India was planning to introduce a “Passbook of Entitlements,” which would be given out to the poor people of the country so that they would be in a position to question their elected representatives and administrative officials on such issues.
Talking of corruption in government departments, TI India executive director Anupama Jha said a survey of corruption in these departments had revealed that police were perceived to be the most corrupt, followed by the department of land records & registration, while lot of corruption was found in housing, NREGS and PDS. The school education department, she said, had been found to be the least corrupt in that survey.