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Monthly News – 2016 Corruption Perception Index Result

According to the 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), there are 176 countries and territories incorporated, and Taiwan ranked the 31st worldwide with the score of 61 out of 100. In 2012, Transparency International has updated the methodology used to compile the index and this new method basically gives the countries and territories raw scores from years to years to reflect on changes. However, except for the scores from 7 institutions as usual, an additional institution, Varieties of Democracy, was added to evaluate the status of Taiwan in the 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index and thus, the comparison between two years would be invalid.
According to the scores from 7 institutions as usual, Taiwan has the same score of 62 as 2015, which can easily brought Taiwan to the 29th place in the worldwide ranking. However, since a new additional institution has been added in 2016’s index, no previous data has shown before; Taiwan only scores 50 out of 100 on Varieties of Democracy, much lower than the average, which affects the score and ranking of Taiwan gone backwards. Moreover, in 2015, there were only 168 countries and territories included in the index compare to 176 in 2016, which would affect the ranking as well. Nonetheless, Taiwan ranks higher than 82.4% of the countries and territories competed. Within Asia-Pacific region, Taiwan is ranked the 7th place after New Zealand (1st with the score 90), Singapore (7th with the score of 84), Australia (13th with the score of 79), Hong Kong (15th with the score of 77), Japan (20th with the score of 72), and Bhutan (27th with the score of 65).
For 2016 CPI, Taiwan was graded by 8 institutions and the scores they graded for Taiwan as follows: Global Insight (GI), 71; Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), 54; International Institute for Management Development (IMD), 65; Bertelsmann Foundation (BF), 50; World Economic Forum (WEF), 77; Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), 51; Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), 50. For more information see Figure 1 below.
In 2015, the additional cited institution V-Dem, its corruption index measures “the range and how often of government corruption?” including government executive bribery, legislature embezzlement, judicial corruption, an index of six indicators of different forms of corruption on a scale 0 to 4. The higher the score means the higher the transparency. Taiwan’s scores were as follow: Executive Bribery and Corrupt Exchanges, 2.46; Executive Embezzlement and Theft, 3; Public Sector Corrupt Exchange, 2.5; Public Sector Theft, 2.99; Legislature Corrupt Activities, 1.35; and Judicial Corruption Decision, 29.1. The higher the score the less corruption occur.
The V-Dem corruption measure is an index of six indicators of different forms of corruption based on original data from country experts. In concerns of the level of administration, as well as judicial officers and legislators’ corruption, it is necessary to fasten the processes of revision on the government in Sunshine Act to improve the score on V-Dem for future index.
In consider of the survey’s target audiences who are mostly foreign companies in Taiwan and businessmen, which resulted in low score on V-Dem. Similarly to The World Economic Forum (WEF) and Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC). It is crucial to focus on how to reduce the negative influences by corruption on business activities and prevent inappropriate interaction between civil servants and businessmen, that is, to prevent the executive bribery and corrupt exchanges, conflicts of interest, and the corrupt exchanges in government procurements and public constructions. Meanwhile, it is crucial to establish the contact windows with the evaluation groups through international institutions and forums and to promote the efforts our country has made for the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and increase the potential index evaluators’ understandings of Taiwan.