KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has moved up to 61st spot among the 180 countries in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2018, one notch higher from the previous year.
Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) president Datuk Akhbar Satar said Malaysia, however, retained the score of 47 out of 100 points on the CPI’s survey.
The CPI scores and ranks are based on 13 surveys and expert assessments which measures the perceived level of corruption in the country’s public sector on a scale from zero (perceived to be highly corrupted) to 100 (perceived to be very clean).
“Among ASEAN countries, Malaysia is among the top three after Singapore and Brunei,” he told a press conference in announcing Malaysia’s CPI result for 2018, which was released by the global anti-graft coalition, Transparency International (TI) worldwide, here yesterday.
He said Malaysia stood below Singapore (3rd) and Brunei (31st), but above Indonesia (89th), Thailand (99th), the Philippines (99th), Vietnam (117th), Myanmar (132nd), Laos (132nd) and Cambodia (161st).
Worldwide, Denmark is in the top spot with 88 points, while New Zealand ranked second with 87 points. Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland shared the third spot with 85 points, making them among the top five countries in the index list.
Akhbar said the bottom last countries were Sudan (16 points), North Korea and Yemen (14 points), South Sudan and Syria (13 points) and Somalia (10 points).
He said TI-M also called on the government and country leaders to provide the leadership and strong political will to drive the message of zero tolerance for graft through solid actions.
“All politicians and senior government servants, such as Attorney-General, Chief Secretary to the Government and Inspector-General of Police should also declare their total assets…it should be made compulsory,” he said.
He also believed that Malaysia is able to jump to a better spot in the future if the new government maintained its full-force momentum of fighting corruption and walk the talk.
Malaysia yesterday launched the National Anti-Corruption Plan (NACP) to step up the war against corruption. –Bernama
