Corruption Perceptions Index – Where’s Malaysia standing?

On January 29, 2019, Transparency International (TI) also released its 24th Annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2018. Transparency International is a global non-governmental organisation based in Berlin, Germany, founded in 1993. Its non-profit purpose is to take action to combat global corruption and prevent criminal activities arising from corruption.

In 1995, TI commissioned Dr Johann Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau, Lower Bavaria, to design and develop the CPI.

Since 1996, TI has annually ranked countries “by their perceived levels of corruption in the public sector, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys”, taking into account 13 different expert assessments and surveys of businesspeople.

TI draws on data sources from 13 independent institutions specialising in governance and business climate analysis. The sources of information used for the CPI are based on data gathered in the past 24 months. These institutional assessments are:

(a) African Development Bank Governance Ratings;

(b) Bertelsmann Foundation Sustainable Governance Indicators;

(c) Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation Index;

(d) Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Ratings;

(e) Freedom House Nations in Transit;

(f) Global Insight Country Risk Ratings;

(g) IMD World Competitiveness;

(h) Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence;

(i) Political Risk Services International Country Risk Guide;

(j) World Bank – Country Policy and Institutional Assessment;

(k) World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey (EOS);

(l) World Justice Project Rule of Law Index; and

(m) Varieties Democratic Index.

Each country needs to be evaluated by at least three sources of these institutions before their results can be published in the CPI report. The Malaysia CPI is based on nine of these expert assessments.

Countries are rated from 0 to 100 (0 being most corrupt and 100 being corruption free). There is no significant improvement yet for Malaysia as the CPI 2018 score is 47/100 and we are ranked 61 out of 180 countries. Our CPI must be at least 83/100 and aim to be among the top 10! We have to ensure that our new National Anti-corruption Plan is put in place to achieve a better ranking on the CPI.

Any guess what Malaysia’s CPI 2018 score will be? Malaysia has gone up one notch to 61 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2018. Malaysia, however, maintained a score of 47 out of 100 points just like last year. In 2017, Malaysia ranked 62 out of 180 countries, scoring 47 points out of 100. In 2016, Malaysia was ranked 55 among 176 countries, scoring 49 points.