By Carolyne Nakazibwe
Oct 8, 2003
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KAMPALA - A new report from Transparency International says Uganda is the 17th most corrupt country in the world. The corruption watchdog said Uganda scored 2.2 out of ten on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). It is a slight improvement from last year when the country was ninth with a CPI of 2.1. However, the report, released in Berlin, Germany, investigated more countries - 133 compared to last year's 102. And the Inspector General of Government, Mr Jotham Tumwesigye, is not about to pop the champagne over the slight improvement. "I expected better than that," he told The Monitor yesterday. "We should take into account that the numbers have increased. I expected (Uganda) to be in the middle. It is just that the countries that have come on board are worse off than us," Tumwesigye said in a phone interview. The ethics and integrity minister, Mr Tim Lwanga, had not read the report when The Monitor called him for comment. He was however sceptical about the 17th position "given the effort we have put in." Uganda has been making steady improvements in the corruption indices since 2000 when it came up third. However, we are still the seventh most corrupt African state; after Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola, Kenya, Libya and Cote d'Ivoire. Bangladesh is the most corrupt country in the world, followed by Nigeria and Haiti. Finland and Iceland are the least corrupt. Kenya is in the eleventh position, while Tanzania is 36th from the bottom. The chairman Transparency Uganda, Mr Wafula Oguttu, said in an interview that the statistics are a perception of what is happening in different countries. "When there is a lot of activity on corruption, then people will hear about it," Wafula said. He cited Kenya where corruption from the past regime is being unearthed, bringing the country into the limelight. "Nine out of ten developing countries score less than five against a clean score of 101/4 their governments must implement results-oriented programmes to fight corruption," TI chairman, Mr Peter Eigen, said yesterday during the launch. Political parties, the courts and the police were identified as the three areas most in need of reform. |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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