Singapore is crowned as the fourth least corrupt country in the world according to Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. Accordingly, Singapore is also the only Asian country to reach the top 10.
Regarding its position, Singapore has been successfully maintaining its fourth spot in the index for two consecutive years. Despite previously having the third spot, the decline does not indicate that Singapore has performed more poorly ever since.
Wilson Ang, the head of Asia regulatory compliance and investigations practice at Norton Rose Fulbright, praised the good work of Singapore anti-corruption practices in business and public services.
He, furthermore, reminded that the country still has homework to update its laws and regulatory systems to fare better. This, accordingly, is to keep up with the global anti-corruption agenda.
“What is more important is that Singapore should continue to keep pace with global developments and update our laws to address the corruption risks in doing business,” he said.
Also Read: PM Lee Proposes a Strong Budget to Support the Singapore Economy
Singapore, Least Corrupt Countries, and CPI 2019
Berlin-based Transparency International has been issuing the global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) since 1995. In 2019, among 180 countries participating, Singapore ranked fourth.
CPI score varies from 0 (very corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Accordingly, Singapore scores 85, the same score the country had back then in 2018.
Regarding this year’s index, the least corrupt countries are New Zealand and Denmark. Additionally, each of them scores 87 respectively.
Finland holds the third spot, scoring 86 in the index, close to the winning countries. Meanwhile, three countries actually possess the predicate of the world’s fourth least corrupt country. They are Singapore, Switzerland, and Sweden.
In the seventh and eighth spots, Norway and Netherlands score 84 and 82 respectively. Following them, both Luxembourg and Germany place ninth with a score of 80.
Among the top 10, only two of them come from Asia and the Pacific. The rest of the countries originates from Western Europe and the European Union.
