ISLAMABAD: Opposition leaders in Pakistan have declared the PTI as the most most corrupt government in the history of Pakistan that was evident from increase in 16 points of corruption index of the Transparency International released on Tuesday.
Transparency International said the perception of corruption in Pakistan has seen a rise for the third straight year, with the country sliding 16 places to rank 140th out of 180 countries surveyed by the organisation.
In 2020, Pakistan’s CPI was 31 and it was ranked 124th out of 180 countries, but this year that score has fallen to 28.
In its ‘2021 Corruption Perception Index’, the Transparency International observed that corruption levels remained at a standstill worldwide, with 86 per cent of countries making little to no progress in the last one decade.
Looking at scores from previous years, Pakistan’s CPI ranking has been on the decline: in 2020, the country was ranked 124th out of 180 countries, 120th in 2019 and 117th in 2018.
The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
As per the CPI report, a country’s rank is its position relative to the other countries in the index. Since ranks can change merely if the number of countries included in the index changes, the rank is therefore not as important as the score in terms of indicating the level of corruption in that country, the report says.
The report used eight data sources to calculate the CPI for Pakistan: Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation index, Economist Intelligence Unit country ratings, Global Insights Country Risk ratings, PRS International Country Risk Guide, Varieties of Democracy Project, World Bank CPIA, World Economic Forum EOS and the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index.
Opposition leaders termed the CPI report a charge sheet of corruption against PM Khan and asked him to resign.
Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif said the PTI govt has broken all records of corruption in the last two decades. Among the Asia-Pacific region, Pakistan has unfortunately been ranked as the 5th most corrupt country, Shehbaz Sharif added.
He tweeted that under his brother Nawaz’s rule, corruption declined despite massive development projects being undertaken and added that corruption was rampant in era of PTI under PM Imran Khan even though his govt did not initiate any major development works unlike PML(N).
PTI Govt stance
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry attributed the drop in Pakistan’s CPI ranking to weak rule of law and ‘state capture’, rather than an actual increase in financial corruption.
He said all the international institutions that helped determine country rankings had Pakistan maintaining its previous ranking – except the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which dropped the country’s ranking.
“If you ascertain that who is heading the Economist in Pakistan, you will find that why Pakistan’s ranking dropped,” he added.
The minister also cast doubt on the credibility of the TI report.
“It is not a concrete and country specific report. We will give our comprehensive response once the complete report is issued. I am not getting into the controversy of whether it is correct or not, he said.
Fawad, nevertheless, admitted that the CPI score indicated a need to take steps to strengthen the rule of law in Pakistan.
