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Corruption, Good Governance and Economic Development: Contemporary Analysis and Case Studies
Corruption, Good Governance and Economic Development Table 2.6
Opacity index rank (2009)
Some selected countries Rank
Country
Opacity score
2
Australia
14
3
Singapore
14
18
Japan
25
22
South Korea
29
27
Malaysia
32
37
India
41
38
China
42
38
Pakistan
42
Source: The Opacity Index, Available at http:// www.pwc.fr/the_opacity_index1.html/.
Conclusion Despite the availability of a number of quantitative measures from different agencies; for example, (1) Transparency International, (2) the World Bank and (3) the Political Risk Services (PRS) Group, the main conclusions emerging from the various measures and studies are very similar: (1) A corrupt country is a corrupt country, no matter what index is used. For example, North Korea, Myanmar, Somalia and Bangladesh are among the most corrupt countries according to all different popular measures. Similarly, a relatively corruption free country like Denmark, or Singapore, or New Zealand will appear at the top of ranking in all different indices, although the precise ranking may be a little different from one index to another. (2) There does not seem to be a short-term correlation between corruption and economic growth. Indeed, two of the most successful countries with two of the highest rates of economic growth in the world, are China and India. But both China and India have a low ranking in all indices. It is however possible that in the longer-term, corruption is an evil that should be avoided and eradicated.
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