Table 2.6 Opacity index rank (2009

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.