27 January 2016

Statement from the National Competitiveness Council

The Philippines dropped in the latest ranking of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The index is based on data gathered from a range of international surveys on governance and business climate. From No. 85 in 2014, the Philippines dropped ten notches to No. 95 of 168 countries in the CPI. It was the country’s first decline in five years. However, despite the drop, the country has climbed a total of 39 spots in the last five years, from No. 134 in 2010, the largest jump in ASEAN and 4th largest in the world.

The Philippines scored 35 out of 100 on a scale ranging from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). The Philippines is ranked fifth out of nine ASEAN countries, trailing behind Singapore (No. 8), Malaysia (No. 54), Thailand (No. 76), and Indonesia (No. 88), and ahead of Vietnam (No. 112), Laos (No. 139), Myanmar (No. 147), and Cambodia (No. 150). Brunei was not included in the 2015 CPI.

The government has initiated several programs to combat corruption. Among them, the National Competitiveness Council together with the Social Weather Stations conducts the Annual Enterprise Survey on Corruption, which measures the quality of public service delivery and prevalence of corruption in key areas across the country. NCC also has a large program to simplify the issuance of local government business permits. Under the Open Government Partnership, the Philippines has made national government data searchable, accessible, and useful to the public through a national open data portal (data.gov.ph). To sustain the gains, the public and private sector must work together to encourage a culture of transparency and accountability and ensure that recent high-level corruption allegations do not overshadow gains on the economic and competitiveness front.