India's rank improves in Global corruption index, moves up by 3 places

Global corruption index for 2018 is out and India has improved its ranking by three positions. India, which was at the 81st place in 2017, has moved up to 78th place in 2018, said reports. It seems that President Xi Jinping's high profile anti-graft campaign has not made much of an impact as China's ranking on perceived corruption has fallen to 87, below India according to the annual index by global watchdog Transparency International.

The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, placed India at the 78th place. In the 2016, India was in the 79th place among 176 countries. The index uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

India's score in the latest ranking marginally improved and it was 41 compared to 40 in 2017. In 2015, the score was 38.
 

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Meanwhile, China slipped by 10 ranks to 87th place in Transparency International's 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday. Vietnam too figured high at 117 while Singapore moved up three spots to third place, behind first-placed Denmark and New Zealand, with the top spot signifying the least corrupt nation.

The US also fell, from 16th to 22nd position, tumbling out of the top 20 for the first time in recent years.

"The Asia-Pacific region is stagnating in the fight against corruption. A lack of progress is unsurprising given the prevalence of weak democratic institutions and a lack of laws and enforcement mechanisms," the Post quoted Transparency International in the report as saying.

Eugene Tan, associate professor at Singapore Management University''s School of Law, said China''s decline in the index revealed concerns that corruption was still prevalent, despite Xi''s campaign.

"The massive ''Belt and Road Initiative'' is probably adding to the negative perception of graft-busting as being more for domestic consumption," he said.

"China''s poor showing probably has more to do with how its intentions are perceived, particularly in overseas economic activity," he was quoted as saying by the Post.

(With inputs from PTI)