Romania, a well-known outsourcing destination, is the most corrupt location amongst the European Union and Western European countries, reveals the findings of a recently released 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International — a global civil-society organization leading the first fight against corruption. The country is ranked 30th in the “regional country rank” with a score of 3.7 points on CPI. The index evaluates countries on a scale from zero to 10, where zero indicates the highest level of corruption perception and 10 the lowest. In the 2006 study, Romania registered a score of 3.1 points — slightly lower than this year’s. Poland (ranked at 28th place in the regional country rank), Slovakia (at 24th), Czech Republic (at 22nd), Slovenia (at 16th) and Ireland (12th) are the other known European outsourcing destinations listed in this year’s CPI.

Highly Corrupt Asia
Let alone in regions of Western Europe and EU, corruption is a serious challenge in Asia with 22 out of 32 countries scoring below five points on CPI this year. Amongst all major outsourcing destinations in Asia — such as India, China, Vietnam, the Philippines — the Philippines is the most corrupt country with 2.5 points on CPI. The country ranked 131st in the global countries’ ranking and stood 22nd amongst the ranking of Asian countries. Interestingly for the Philippines, corruption perception hasn’t grown in the last one year when it scored the same 2.5 points on CPI.

In fact the country was tagged as the most corrupt location in South Asia in a study done by Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PBRC) released earlier this year.

With a fair upgradation in the corruption levels of India and China both ranked at the 72nd position with 3.5 points on CPI this year. In 2006, both the countries registered scores of 3.3 each.

Correlation Between Corruption and Poverty
The study results are based on the data collected from 14 expert opinion surveys, where about 180 countries and territories established a strong correlation between corruption and poverty.

Almost one third of the American countries in the Caribbean belt (that are poor as well) scored below three — that means high level of corruption. While Haiti stood first in corruption with the least score of 1.6 points amongst the all American countries, more than two-fifths including Belize (3 points), Dominican Republic (21 points), Panama (3.2 points), Jamaica (3.3 points), Trinidad & Tobago and Grenada (both with 3.4 points), Brazil, Mexico, Suriname, Columbia and Peru (all with 3.5 points), El Salvador (4 points) and Cuba (4.2 points) scored between 3 and 5. In fact, the corruption levels amongst these countries are perceived to be serious by their experts.     

On the contrary, rich American nations scored above 5 points on CPI showing moderate corruption. For instance, Canada is a fairly clean country in terms of corruption with  8.7 points. The U.S. (7.2 points), Chile (7.0 points), Barbados (6.9 points), St. Lucia (6.8 points), Uruguay, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (6.7 points), Dominica (5.6 points) and Costa Rica (5 points) follow the race.

Apart from poverty, low level of education in many of the above-mentioned countries is also cited as one of the main reasons for alarming levels of corruption there.