Corruption Still Pervasive - 2007 CPI Report

The government and people of Ghana appear to have lots of work to do in the fight against corruption as its incidence is still highly pervasive in the country.

Latest report from Transparency International (TI), the world acclaimed anti-corruption Non-governmental Organization, ranks Ghana 69 alongside Romania on the list of 180 countries included in the 2007 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) with a score of 3.7 out of the maximum possible score of 10.

This represents a slight improvement over Ghana's 2006 ranking of 70 with a score of with a score of 3.3.

This year's score is the second highest since Ghana was included in the CPI.

At the continental level, only four countries ranked ahead of Ghana.

They included Botswana (5.4), South Africa (5.1), Mauritius (4.7) and Namibia (4.5).

On the African front, Botswana (5.4) and South Africa (5.1), though not among the first 30 high performers, top the African countries that scored above 5.

Launching the report in Accra, Vitus Azeem, the Executive Secretary of the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of TI, underscored that "but for the lack of a consistent trend,

Ghana's performance on the 2007 CPI could suggest that some of the good governance and anti-corruption measures Ghana has put in place in recent years may be bearing fruits."

That notwithstanding, he said: "there is no cause to celebrate this apparent improvement," since according to him, "the fact remains that Ghana is still stagnating between the score of 3 and 4 and has yet to attain the halfway score of 5."

For him, the fact that Ghana was unable to get a pass score of 5 or a score near that in spite of government promises to crack down on corruption, coupled with institutional reforms such as the passage of the Public Procurement Act and Whistleblowers Act indicated the need for improvement.

Instead, he emphasised that, "the 2007 score should rather remind us that we are far from winning the fight against corruption, which also frustrates our fight against poverty reduction, disease and ignorance."

He thus warned that if not addressed, corruption could remain an enormous drain on Ghana's limited resources, which could better be used for education, health and infrastructure development.

Ghana was one of the about 42 countries across the world which benefited from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and was also one of eighteen countries selected to benefit from the United States government's Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and the Multi-Lateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI).

These debt reliefs and financial assistance also impose a responsibility on Ghana to ensure transparency, accountability and efficiencyin order to reduce corruption and waste in the use of the increased resources.

Mr. Azeem was thus observed, "If the current level of perceived corruption reflects actual corruption, then Ghana and her colleague HIPC countries face the grave risk that any debt relief savings could be mismanaged, wasted or find their way into pockets of greedy and selfish individuals."

Globally, only 46 countries, constituting 25.5% of the 180 countries covered by the report for the 2007 index, scored 5 and/or above.

These are mostly the developed and rich countries.

Denmark has pushed up to the top, with Finland and New Zealand maintaining their rank (albeit with lower scores), indicating very low levels of perceived corruption.

They are followed by Singapore (9.3), Sweden (9.3), Iceland (9.2) and Switzerland (9.0).

Other good performers include Canada (8.7), Norway (8.7), Australia (8.6), Luxembourg (8.4) and United Kingdom (8.4).

The United States remained on its 2006 rank of 20 although with a lower score of 7.2 in 2007.

Roughly, 75% of the countries covered in the 2007 CPI scored below 5 out of the clean score of 10.

This is worrying as it indicates a high level of perceived corruption globally.

Worse still, a substantial number of countries (76) scored less than 3 on the CPI, indicating a perception of severe corruption in these largely poor and developing countries. The countries which performed really badly with than less than 2 were the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Laos, Afghanistan, Chad, Sudan, Tonga, Uzbekistan, Haiti, Iraq, Myanmar and Somalia.

Among the several recommendations given by the TI include the need for developing countries to use financial aids to strengthen their governance institutions, guided by national assessments and development strategies and to incorporate strengthened integrity and corruption prevention as an integral part of poverty reduction programmes.

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