Comparative study of CPI Data: 2001 versus 2005 

Mozammel H. Khan

Published on February 13, 2007

 

Yet, it was one more record setting news for Bangladesh, but as usual not a good one. �Chad, Bangladesh Are Most Corrupt�, read the heading of the October 18 issue of the New York Times. This was the flashing news in many news agencies around the globe as soon as the Transparency International (TI), the Berlin based watchdog body on corruption released its report on Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of 2005. NY times further wrote, �in Bangladesh, government agencies siphoned off a reported $68 million through corruption last year, with the communications sector the worst offender, the group (TI) said in September. Government officials and senior bureaucrats were blamed in 72 percent of the cases involving misuse of public funds in the South Asian nation. In terms of bribes and misuse of power, the police department was responsible for nearly 17 percent of money lost, the earlier report said�. The Globe and Mail, Canada�s elite news daily that includes the top business leaders in its readership, that seldom cares to report the happenings in the developing world, did not neglect, this time, to feature the story circulated by the Reuter News agency that read, �Bangladesh, Chad come bottom of corruption list�. Although this dubious distinction has been uninterruptedly bestowed on the nation since 2001, this year the news release attracted extra attention since Bangladesh has already been in the news map due to the unprecedented internal violent activities over the past year and the record setting terrorist bombings of August 17. TI has been publishing its CPI ranking report since 1995. Bangladesh, featured first time in its list in 1996 ranking, secured the fourth berth from the bottom placing itself above Nigeria, Pakistan, and Kenya among the 54 countries listed in the survey. The next time Bangladesh�s name came up in the list was in 2001, which was incidentally at the fag end of the AL rule and right before the last general election. The top leaders of the then opposition party exploited the humiliating news to their fullest advantage granting all the credit for this dubious distinction to their adversaries. They attributed the TI report as �timely and beyond question� and �was done on the basis of international indices and not made to denigrate Bangladesh�. Between 1997 and 2000, Bangladesh�s name was not included since TI requires data from at least three independent sources to publish the ranking. However, in 2001, though three sources were available for Bangladesh, but the data were so much statistically unstable that the TI report included the only footnote in its report for Bangladesh that read, �Data for this country in 2001 was available from only three independent survey sources, and each of these yielded very different results. While the composite score is 0.4, the range of individual survey results is from -1.7 to +3.8. This is a greater range than for any other country. TI stresses, therefore, that this result needs to be viewed with caution�. In my article entitled, �CPI index: Basis and Validity� (DS 17 July 2001), I vehemently questioned the statistical validity of the data. The sources of the data were Freedom House, Price Water House Coopers and World Business Environment Survey of the World Bank. The variations between data values were so large that it gave a standard deviation of 2.9 and standard error of 2.0. No other country�s data in the last eleven years of TI�s history has generated such a high standard deviation. It further generated a range over mean ratio of 14 and a coefficient of variation (CV) of 725 per cent. The same parameter (CV) for Canada, India and Pakistan (whose data had the second highest CV value) were 6 per cent, 18 per cent and 72 per cent respectively. A lower CV value indicates a higher objectivity and scientific validity of the data. In conclusion, I reemphasized, �one does not have to be a Fisher of statistics to discard these unstable data, let alone using them in any scientific analysis�. To show the instability of the data, if, for example, one survey result out of three was taken out, Bangladesh would have an average score of 1.5 instead of 0.4 that would have changed the ranking drastically. In statistical jargons, these are known as �corrupt data�. My viewpoints were partly concurred with in the response by Prof. Dr Johann Graf Lambsdorff (TI Adviser and director of the statistical work on the CPI) published in the Daily Star, while his disagreement with my observations was technically untenable as was indicated by me in my reactions published in the DS as well.

The TI report of 2005 included 159 countries as opposed to 91 in 2001. More over, the country such as Chad, with which Bangladesh shared the bottom berth, Turkmenistan, Myanmar and Haiti that ranked right above Bangladesh were not included in 2001. This time around, the data for Bangladesh were drawn from seven sources and incidentally, none of these sources provided data for Bangladesh in 2001. Each of these sources carried out surveys in 95 to 155 countries. Out of these the World Economic Forum provide data for three consecutive years-- 2003, 2004 and 2005 based on its survey of senior business leaders, domestic and international companies. This year�s data for Bangladesh yielded a mean score of 1.7, a 90 per cent confidence range of 1.4 to 2.0 and a standard deviation of 0.41 and standard error of 0.154. These resulted in a range over mean ratio of 0.35 (14 in 2001) and a CV of 24 per cent (725 in 2001). Therefore, from the statistical perspective, there is nothing to contest so far the validity and the stability of the data is concerned.

Our politicians, especially those who are in the helm of the State, try to invent conspiracy in every critical report or review that either appears in the international press such as Bertil Lintner�s one on rising Islamic fundamentalism in the Far Eastern Economic Review or comes out of the foreign capital such as TI report on Corruption. The unparalleled incident of August 17 and October 3 and the subsequent bone-chilling revelations by the suspected mastermind only helped to prove the accuracy of Lintner�s story. The day-to-day experience of the people who are enduring the burnt of endemic corruption only validates the findings of the TI report.

When the TI report appeared in 2001, the then government pointed its finger to a highly vocal trustee of TIB for his alleged conspiracy to release the report right before the general election notwithstanding the fact that the TI report was neither prepared for nor intended to release in Bangladesh only. Ironically, a minister of the present government whose ministry has been identified as the �worst offender� by TIB imputing the very individual as one of those who are trying to portray Bangladesh as a �failed state�. The very politicians in whose ears the TI report sounded like sweet music in 2001 became high-pitched noise thereafter, not only once, but also for four consecutive years since their ascendancy to power in 2001. Now the minister who once opined that the TI report �was not made to denigrate Bangladesh� is now brandishing the organization as one whose �brain has to be examined�.

Although TI report is not intended to make a comparative study of the performance of successive governments of any country, consecutive ranking of Bangladesh at the bottom of the list, a unique feat, does not bode well for the performance of current government in reflecting its resolve to fight corruption vis-�-vis its predecessor. This government published hundred of pages of white papers elaborating the corruptions of its predecessor. However, neither the people of the country nor the international bodies did find any trace of indications reflecting any flattening trend of the positive slope of the corruption curve, let alone reversing it, since the publication of the white papers. In fact, the newspaper reports expose only a tip of the iceberg of the corruptions stories that circulate around. None of the stories that involve the corruption of the government leaders and their family members have ever been contested or dispelled by the government through any credible investigations or explanations.

A few comparisons involving the current government and its predecessor in their public actions to arrest corruption would be in proper order. During the tenure of the past AL government, DIT plots were allotted mostly to the AL leaders, which the newspapers dubbed as �Awami Village�. After severe criticisms from the news media, the then PM, through an executive order, cancelled the allotments. Exactly the same irregularities were repeated during the current government when the DIT plots were allotted mostly to the BNP supporters. In spite of the similar criticisms from the media, the present PM did not bother to follow suit.

There was no alternate centre of power during the tenure of the past government as it exists to day, and which, in views of the government�s detractors, has stakes in most big businesses and government contracts. The erstwhile PM�s son did not own any business in the country; neither did he borrow any money from the country�s bank. To the contrary, there are reports all over about the current PM�s sons owning multiple businesses and big investments, at both home and abroad. Only on the other day, the leader of the opposition accused the government of writing off hundred of millions taka of interest of the loans owed to PM�s sons by the nation�s bank. It was incumbent on a democratically elected government with the slightest transparency and accountability to contest the accusation, if it did not have any merit, specially when it came from the official leader of the opposition and former PM.

A TIB trustee while publishing the report at Dhaka has asked both the current and the former PMs to disclose their assets publicly. The former PM has not only agreed to the suggestion but has gone a step further by challenging that the assets of the PM�s son, a political heir apparent, should be also included in the declaration. It is now the turn of the PM to accept the challenge of her adversary and let the people of the country as well as the international bodies know who amassed how much wealth during their political career since both of them had humble starts some quarter of a century ago.

Dr. Mozammel H. Khan is the Convenor of the Canadian Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Bangladesh. He writes from Toronto, Canada.