Transparency International (TI) still perceives India to be among the most corrupt countries. In its annual index, the global watchdog has ranked the nation 84th on a list of 180 countries in terms of public-sector corruption.
While releasing the list naming and shaming the world’s most corrupt countries, TI has, for the first time, recommended that tax havens such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein should do away with secrecy in banking laws.
“Corrupt money must not find a safe haven. It’s time to put an end to secrecy in banking laws,” the Berlin-based group’s head Huguette Labelle said.
Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq are the bottom five nations, while the cleanest countries with ranking close to perfect 10 are New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore.
According to the corruption perception index, India scored 3.4, much lower than Bhutan which scored 5 and claimed the 49th spot on the list.
India’s corruption index is the same as last year. But in the last five years, the country shown significant improvement.
In 2004, India had scored 2.8, claiming the 90th spot on a list of 146 countries.
This year, developing countries such as Serbia, Burkina Faso, Peru and Ghana fared better than India claiming 83rd, 79th, 75th and 69th spots. China scored 3.6, slightly better than India.
Neighbouring Nepal claimed the 143rd position, Pakistan scored 2.4 claiming the 139th position along with Bangladesh, while Sri Lanka scored 3.1 and stood at the 97th position.
Nearly half the countries scored three or less on the scale of zero (indicating most corrupt) to 10 (indicating least corrupt) showing that corruption is rampant across the world.
“Transparency International has found that a strong correlation between corruption and poverty continues to exist, jeopardising the global fight against poverty and threatening to derail the United Nations millennium development goals,” Admiral (retd) RH Tahiliani, chairman of Transparency International, India), said.
