PNG rated 154 out of 178 corrupt nations

THE 2010 Corruption perception index (CPI) has ranked PNG 154 out of a total of 178 countries surveyed in the world.
This was announced yesterday by Transparency International PNG (TIPNG) chairman Peter Aitsi when presenting the Global CPI report for 2010 on PNG’s performance.
Aitsi said on a scale used by CPI to rate countries, PNG was graded 2.1
He said this further confirmed that no serious action had been taken to reduce corruption in the country since 2005.
The scale used by CPI grades countries from 0-10.
A score of zero means that a country is totally corrupt while 10 shows that a country is perceived as having no corruption at all.
In the report, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore scored the highest with a grading of 9.3 each while Somalia was perceived to be the most corrupt country in the world scoring 1.1.
When compared to its Pacific neighbours such as Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu, which had, over the years, managed to improve their rankings significantly, Aitsi said that PNG’s position was a serious warning to the government as its grading had not improved since 2005.
“The concern that TIPNG has is that as corruption is seemingly taking place within our public systems, public institutions and government institutions, the problem it presents as a nation is that as our economy grows, the level of revenue flowing through our government system increases.
“If the government does not take firm and decisive action to address corruption within the public service, we are going to see significant losses of public funds through the systems,” Aitsi said.
He further added TIPNG feared the worst for PNG and that the government needed to demonstrate significant action to tackle corruption in the country to improve our rankings.