DUSHANBE, October 12, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan’s Center for Strategic Studies on October 11 held a news conference to discuss its work in the first nine months of the year.
Speaking to journalists, Abduvohid Shamolov, the head of the center’s department for national strategy and socioeconomic programs, dwelled on the corruption problems in the country and the results of a Transparency International (TI) 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
We will recall that the survey ranked Tajikistan, with a score of 2.4, 150th along with the Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan. The CPI ranked 180 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.
The 2007 CPI looks at perceptions of public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories – the greatest country coverage of any CPI to date – and is a composite index that draws on 14 expert opinion surveys. It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption.
The Russian Federation has been ranked 143rd, while last year, it was at 127 of the CPI. Turkmenistan has been ranked 162nd and Uzbekistan has been ranked 175th in the 2007 CPI.
The 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index ranks 20 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The annual Corruption Perceptions Index, first released in 1995, is the best known of Transparency International’s (TI) tools. It has been widely credited with putting TI and the issue of corruption on the international policy agenda.
Shamolov noted that the 150th place does not mean that Tajikistan’s authorities do not combat corruption.
In 2006, the TI survey ranked Tajikistan, with a score of 2.1 score, 144th along with the Congo, Kenya, Pakistan, Paraguay, Somalia, and Sudan. But last year, the CPI ranked 163 countries.
“The score of 2.4 is not so bad for Tajikistan, because several years ago we were among five the most corrupt countries as Uzbekistan was ranked this year,” Shamolov said.
Shamolov stressed that Transparency International CPI’s findings were based on the data provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a number of international organizations as well as the sociological surveys.
