Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo is not at all impressed with the latest report of Transparency International which deems Guyana as one of the most significantly improved nations on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
This news agency reported this morning that Guyana moved up eight places on the 2019 CPI, coming in at the 85th position out of 180 countries while in 2018 it placed 93. In previous years too, Guyana placed 91 for 2017, 108 for 2016 and 119 for 2015.
At his press conference which was held at his Church Street Office today, Jagdeo alluded to the perspective that the index does not reflect the reality on the ground. The PPP General Secretary said that these international organizations feed off of reports of the local groups and for the last five years, the local chapter of the international body has essentially disappeared.
Further to this, Jagdeo said that Transparency International does not have a report from the local group regarding the Government’s failure to submit information to the Integrity Commission or the fact that Ministers have sums of money in their accounts to which they cannot provide a proper explanation.
Despite the improved placement on the CPI, Jagdeo said, “…We know about the reality of life here.”
Transparency International was established in 1995 and only takes into account assessments from 12 different institutions. The institutions are the African Development Bank (based in Ivory Coast), Bertelsmann Foundation (based in Germany), Economist Intelligence Unit (based in UK), Freedom House (based in US), Global Insight (based in US), International Institute for Management Development (based in Switzerland), Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (based in Hong Kong), The PRS Group, Inc., (based in US), World Economic Forum, World Bank, and the World Justice Project (based in US).
According to Transparency International, countries need to be evaluated by at least three of these sources to appear on the CPI which measures perceptions of corruption due to the difficulty of measuring absolute levels of the same.
