Tuesday, October 18, 2005
How corrupt is your country?
Ireland is more corrupt than the USA (damn you Ihle), but it's less corrupt than Spain (in your face Perez). That's according to Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index, which was published today. The survey rates countries "in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". In other words, it measures perceived, rather than actual corruption, which is pretty much impossible to measure when you think about it.Ireland comes in with a rating of 7.4 (where 10 means the least corruption) making it joint 19th with Belgium in the rankings. Our score has fallen from 7.5 last year and our ranking has dropped from joint 17th.
Iceland, at 9.7, comes in at number one. No doubt, butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. Chad and Bangladesh tie at the bottom with a score of 1.7.
As Transparency International notes, despite progress on many fronts, including the imminent entry into force of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, seventy countries - nearly half of those included in the Index - scored less than 3 on the CPI, indicating a severe corruption problem. Many of the countries near the bottom of the list, such as Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Myanmar and Haiti, are also among the poorest countries in the world.
Categories: Ireland , Corruption
posted by Dick O'Brien at 1:44 PM | link |
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