GHANA IMPROVES RATING ON CORRUPTION INDEX (Page 21)

25/09/2008

Story: Mary Mensah
Ghana Scored 3.9 out of the maximum possible score of 10 and ranked 67 on the list of 180 countries included in the 2008 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of Transparency International.
This represents an improvement of 0.2 over Ghana’s 2007 ranking of 69 with a score of 3.7 just as last year’s score was an improvement over the 2006 performance.
The Executive Secretary of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, Mr Vitus Azeem, who announced this at a press briefing to launch Transparency International’s 2008 CPI, said this year’s score took Ghana back to its highest score ever of 3.9 that it obtained only in 2002.
He attributed Ghana’s improvement to the enactment of laws aimed at promoting transparency and accountability, considered the basis in the fight against corruption in the country.
He said the creation and support of anti-corruption or accountability institutions by the government and development partners such as DANIDA, GTZ, USAID and DFID had played an important role in getting Ghana this score.
Mr Azeem said it was unfortunate that Ghana had not reached the pass mark after eight years of zero tolerance for corruption but had taken it five years to return to its first-time high score attained in 2002, adding that with the current rate Ghana would reach the 50 per cent mark in 10 years or more.
The Executive Director indicated that the low levels of enforcement of anti-corruption laws, the newspaper reports about alleged corruption that the government did little about and the impunity with which public officials reacted to such allegations, no doubt explained Ghana’s failure to score even 4.0 on the TI’s CPI.
“Thus, while we might rejoice at the improvement of the scores from 3.7 to 3.9 we should recognise that there is more to be done. In fact the trend should awaken us to the fact that we are far from winning the fight against corruption, which also frustrates our fight against poverty reduction, disease, ignorance and efforts to reach the middle-income status,” he said.
He said globally, Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden shared the highest score of 9.3 followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2 with Somalia in the rear with 1.0 slightly trailing Iraq and Myanmar at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4.
He said Botswana topped Africa’s performance list with 5.8 followed by Mauritius at 5.5, South Africa 4.9 and Namibia 4.5.
Spelling out what needed to be done by the current President and whoever would take over from him come January 2009, Mr Azeem called for the fast-track passage of the freedom of Information Law, to ensure that the Assets Declaration Law was complied with and that disclosures could be verified, among others.