India 2nd-most corrupt: Asia Inc

A survey of foreign company executives has found that most believe corruption in Asia is getting worse, Hong Kong-based Political & Economic...

A survey of foreign company executives has found that most believe corruption in Asia is getting worse, Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd (PERC) said. Corruption in more than half of the countries covered in a survey was deemed to be worse this year than last year, it said.

‘‘Corruption is perceived to have worsened as a problem in the past year in seven of the 12 Asian countries covered,’’ the group said. The survey of 1,072 expatriate executives working in Asia found Indonesia was seen as the most corrupt country, with a score of 9.33 out of a possible 10, although that was better than last year’s score of 9.92.

Corruption was seen to be getting worse in India — dubbed the second most corrupt after Indonesia — followed by China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam, the group said. Singapore maintained its billing as the least corrupt, with its best ever score of 0.38 in the PERC survey, which was first issued in 1997.

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The city-state, known for its efficient bureaucracy, scored a rating of 0.90 last year. The second-least corrupt place behind Singapore was judged to be Hong Kong, at 3.61, followed by Japan at 4.5. PERC said corruption in Asia should be weighed against misdeeds in the West including the Enron accounting scandal. Compared with such cases, ‘‘much of the corruption in Asia is penny ante stuff’’, it said.

At the other end of the scale, corruption in India ‘‘affects people’s daily lives in such basic ways’’, including paying fees for admission to better schools and to get electricity installed. A battle by communist Vietnam to clean up graft, including the prosecution of an alleged crime gang leader, apparently bore little fruit. It was dubbed the third-most corrupt in the survey, with a grade of 8.83 compared with 8.25 in 2002.

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