Transparency International has released the Corruption Perceptions Index 2016 in which Pakistan is ranked at 116th position, Australia at 13th while India is ranked at 79th spot.
Providing the context behind the rankings, Transparency International wrote on its website that the lower-ranked countries in the index “are plagued by untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions like the police and judiciary.”
“Even where anti-corruption laws are on the books, in practice they’re often skirted or ignored. People frequently face situations of bribery and extortion, rely on basic services that have been undermined by the misappropriation of funds, and confront official indifference when seeking redress from authorities that are on the take.”
The most corrupted nations, as per the index, are Somalia (176), South Sudan (175), North Korea (174), and Syria (173).
The least corrupt nations are Denmark (1), New Zealand (1), Finland (3), Sweden (4), and Switzerland (5).
While acknowledging that no country gets a perfect score in the index, Transparency International said the high-ranked countries “tend to have higher degrees of press freedom, access to information about public expenditure, stronger standards of integrity for public officials, and independent judicial systems.”
“But high-scoring countries can’t afford to be complacent, either. While the most obvious forms of corruption may not scar citizens’ daily lives in all these places, the higher-ranked countries are not immune to closed-door deals, conflicts of interest, illicit finance, and patchy law enforcement that can distort public policy and exacerbate corruption at home and abroad.”
