Transparency International has ranked Pakistan at 117th on the global Corruption Perceptions Index 2017 out of 180 nations. The worldwide ranking is based on the level of perceived public sector corruption in Pakistan and the government’s failure to curb financial misconduct. The country showed no improvement in its ranking of 2016 when it was placed at 116th out of 176 countries. Experts opine the score was 32 in 2016 and in fact the level dropped down from 116 to 117 on the global list. The score is still 32. The international non-government organization index ranks the countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption and uses a scale from zero to 100, where zero indicates high level of corruption and 100 is clean. The agency believes most of the countries are not improving their ranks on the Corruption Perception Index or moving too slow to curb the menace. It says the countries with lowest press protections and the non-governmental organizations also tend to have the worst rates of corruption. It also observed various countries have failed to make any progress to streamline their financial affairs.
According to the agency, New Zealand and Denmark ranked the highest by obtaining the scores of 89 and 88, respectively while Syria stood at 14, South Sudan 12 and Somalia 9. The agency also reveals that more than two-thirds of countries have scored below 50 with an average score of 43. These countries could not improve their ranking despite several efforts. The Western Europe has emerged as the best performing region with an average score of 66 whereas Sub-Saharan Africa bagged an average score 32 and Eastern Europe and Central Asia 34. The world still regards corruption as curse, but in Pakistan’s case any effort to curb corruption is labeled as political victimization by the suspects. The recent cases, in which senior leaders of various political parties are struggling to absolve themselves of corruption charges by getting clean chits form the courts. However, the situation has drastically changes. The country took a loan of $45 billion in four and half years, but where the money has gone is unclear. There is no ledger in any government department with details of expenditures it has done during the period in question. Instead, the political leaders are trying to politicize the whole exercise. An across the board accountability is need of the hour.
