Although it might not have been significantly reflected in the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index

(CPI), the government has been successful in fighting corruption, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Idris Jala.

He was commenting on Malaysia maintaining its 56th position out of 178 countries in the TI International CPI this year - despite scoring a little less by 0.1 points, as compared to last year's results.

While the score was not quite a case for celebration, he said it need not be seen as negative development.

It reflected the nature of the CPI, rather than a lack of progress on the Government Transformation Programme (GTP)’s National Key Results Area (NKRA) of fighting corruption, Idris said in a statement to Bernama today.

Malaysia, ranked third amongst the South East Asian countries, after Singapore and Brunei, scored 4.4 points out of 10, ahead of Thailand with 3.5 (78th) and Indonesia 2.8 (110th).

economic transformation programme 210910 idris jala 02 Idris, who is also Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) chief executive officer, said that despite the slight dip, a closer look at the scoring for this year’s CPI showed an improvement in the perception of respondents under some of the constituent surveys, namely the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy’s Asian Intelligence Newsletter, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report.

“This bodes well for the future, as we can infer that we are on the right track with the initiatives and efforts under this NKRA (national key result areas) so far," he said.

Naming and shaming of offenders

He said, in a move to learn and exchange best practices on tackling graft,  Malaysia participated in regional and international anti-corruption conferences.

It will take part in the 14th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok between Nov 10 and 13.

Idris said the government had taken various steps, among others, to fight corruption. This includes setting up 18 special corruption courts and making amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code to ensure trials were completed expeditiously for a more successful outcome.

He said the government had also taken steps to "naming and shaming of offenders" under the Convicted Corruption Offenders Database on the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission website which collated relevant details of convicted corruption offenders.

To date, 222 offenders have been listed in the database on www.sprm.gov.my since it was created in February this year.

Idris said efforts were also made to implement the Whistleblower Protection Act, which was passed early this year, by end of the year.

In terms of corruption in procurement, among the steps taken by the government was to create greater transparency, with 3,716 government contract tender awards now published in the MyProcurement portal at myprocurement.treasury.gov.my, he said.

- Bernama