March 19, 2001
Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore are the least corrupt economies in Asia, where corruption remains embedded despite the fact that it helped trigger the regional financial crisis in 1997, a report said Sunday.
China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam were perceived to be the most corrupt Asian nations, with Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan falling just below the average, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy said in its latest survey on corruption.
"One would have hoped that the economic crisis that hit the Asian region in 1997 would have been a wake-up call to the problem of corruption," the report said. "Unfortunately, our survey indicates that the problem, as those working in the countries of the region perceive it, has not really improved very much during the past four years."
In some countries, corruption even worsened compared with 1996, the year before the crisis. Surveying more than 700 expatriate businessmen working in 12 Asian economies, the Hong Kong-based consultancy found that "the perception is clearly that corruption remains a serious problem in most countries."
While it exists almost everywhere, distinguishing factors can be the ability of a nation's legal system to fight the problem, the government's willingness to lead the effort and the attitude of the local population toward corruption, the report said.
Grading countries on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being the best score, the consultancy said small but affluent Singapore had maintained its squeaky-clean image with a score of 0.83.
Singapore's grade beat the scores of 1.77 recorded by the United States and 1.72 for Australia - two countries surveyed for purposes of obtaining an outside benchmark on how corruption is perceived as a problem in developed economies.
Japan was second-cleanest in Asia, with a score of 2.50, and Hong Kong came in third, with a grade of 3.77, slipping from 2.49 last year. Hong Kong's political, economic and geographical links to China, where corruption is much more pervasive, remain a challenge, the report said.
At the other end of the corruption scale was Vietnam, with a grade of 9.75, Indonesia with 9.50, India with 9.25, the Philippines with 9.0, Thailand with 8.55 and China with 7.88. South Korea was graded at 7.00, while Malaysia and Taiwan both got scores of 6.0.
The report grouped the Philippines and Thailand as "countries where corruption is a serious problem but no one seems to be in a big hurry to change the system."
