In the News

Taiwan’s corruption ranking improves

• Publication Date：03/10/2010
• Source： Commercial Times

Taiwan’s corruption ranking has improved from last year and its civil servants are perceived as being “cleaner” than politicians, according to a survey by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy.

In a grading system with zero as the best possible score and 10 the worst, Taiwan got 6.28 in the survey, which placed it eighth out of 16 economies. This is up one notch from 6.47 in 2009.

Local government civil servants were seen as the least corrupt officials in Taiwan with a score of 4.49. They were followed by their central administration counterparts with 5.4, local politicians with 7.53, and national level politicians with 8.07.

A grade greater than 7.0 indicates that a “serious” corruption problem exists, PERC said.

The results are based on more than 2,174 responses from business executives in 14 Asian economies plus Australia and the United States, which were included for comparison purposes.

Since President Ma Ying-jeou took office, he has made real headway in delivering clean government to the people of Taiwan, the Ministry of Justice said March 9. “As part of this drive, the ministry will continue fighting corruption in an effort to boost the ROC’s competitiveness and international image.”

According to the MOJ, Taiwan’s politicians fared worse than civil servants in the survey because of the corruption scandal involving former President Chen Shui-bian and his family. Vote-buying in local elections may also have played a factor.

Singapore was seen as the least corrupt economy, followed by Australia, Hong Kong, the U.S., Japan, Macau and South Korea. Mainland China, which scored 6.52, was ranked 10th, down two places from last year. (PCT-JSM)