Transparency International Pakistan Clarifies Corruption Perception Index 2019

Chairman Transparency International Pakistan, Advocate Sohail Muzzafar has said that the Corruption Perception Index 2019 (CPI 2019) has not declared that corruption has increased in Pakistan during 2019.

The press release quoted TI Pakistan Chairman Sohail Muzaffar 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 which is 2.46%”.

It cited the example of Denmark, which had also experienced a drop from 87 to 88 yet it was the least corrupt country in 2018 and 2019.

A number of politicians, TV channels and newspapers have misreported the CPI Report, and given false figures trying to damage the reputation of Pakistan. The clarification was issued in order to set the record right, read the press release.

Clarifications/Corrections

Out of 8 sources used in Pakistan’s CPI, data of 2016/17 is used by Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2020 Code: BF(TI) which mentions a lower score by 3, and data of 2015/2016/2017 is used by Rule of Law Index 2019 which had a lower score by 2. 6 other sources’ scores were same as in 2018.

The press release clarified that Bertelsmann Stiftung Transformation Index 2020 data was not made public, and will be declared in 2020, and only provided info to TI for their CPI 2019 while media reports have quoted data of CPI 2018. Rule of Law’s data was collected between May and November 2018, and RLI 2018’s data was collected between May and December 2017.

The BTI score is lower by 4.12 and not 3, and the RoL Index score is lower by 2.4 and not 2. And the scores of the other 6 sources used in CPI are all different form 2018, scores of 3 sources (WB, PRS & EIU) increased and for 2 sources (VDP, WEF&GICR) the scores were reduced.

One political leader said in the media that CPI 2019 has rated the governments of President Musharraf as most corrupt, of Imran Khan 2nd most corrupt and of PML-N as cleanest and PPP as 2nd cleanest, and TI/TI-Pakistan has engineered CPI 2019.

CPI’s press release clarified that CPI 2019 has not given any such rating for Pakistan or for any other country. TI does not have its own data input in CPI, and TI Pakistan is not involved in making up the data on its own.

Data Collection Procedure

TI Pakistan explained how the CPI is prepared by Transparency International in Germany, and what data is used in CPI:

  1. CPI does not include any data from any survey conducted by Transparency International.
  2. CPI is compiled by Transparency International at Berlin and TI-Pakistan has no role in the preparation of CPI.
  3. CPI aggregates data from 13 different sources of 12 different institutions that provide the perception of corruption by business people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector.
  4. Each of the scores of the 13 sources included in the CPI is standardized by TI and data is entered in a piece of software, to calculate for the aggregation into the CPI score. The standardization converts all the data points to a scale of 0-100 where a 0 represents the highest level of perceived corruption and 100 the lowest level of perceived corruption
  5. CPI 2019 for Pakistan has used data of 8 sources.

Advocate Sohail Muzaffar, Chairman TI Pakistan also said that TI Pakistan had praised the increased anti-corruption efforts of the present government, and the better performance of the present set-up of NAB.



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