Lowering of spot doesn’t reflect increase in corruption, clarifies TI-Pakistan

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: The Transparency International Pakistan (TIP), which released a global corruption perceptions report last week showing the country had slipped three spots from the last year’s ranking, has issued a clarification saying “lowering of Pakistan score by one does not reflect any increase or decrease in corruption as it is within the standard margin of error”.

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index published annually by the Transparency International (TI) which ranks countries “by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys”.

TI-Pakistan Chairman Advocate Sohail Muzzafar said in a statement issued on Sunday that the CPI has not declared that in 2019 corruption has increased in Pakistan. The TI report had ranked Pakistan 120 out of 180 countries on the CPI 2019 in its latest report.

According to the statement, the rebuttal was issued as the “number of politicians, TV channels and newspapers have misreported the CPI report, and given false figures trying to damage the reputation of Pakistan”.

While terming the report “biased”, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan had said that the report was not fair and transparent and added that it had also been rejected by the masses since it apparently has been managed by the “kings of corruption sitting abroad”.

Responding to the claims of government and opposition, the TIP chairman said the CPI 2019 did not declare the government of former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf as the most corrupt and the incumbent PTI government as the second most corrupt.

The communique also added it did not termed the governments of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as cleanest and second cleanest respectively.

“Reality is that CPI 2019 has not given any such rating for Pakistan, nor for any other country. TI does not have its own data input in CPI, and TI Pakistan has not role in making of CPI, nor has any data input in it,” read the statement.

The chairman also recalled that the TI-Pakistan in its latest report had appreciated the efforts of the incumbent government and the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against eliminating corruption.