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March 31, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 8
Corruption vs GDP per capita
bne IntelliNews
Corruption has been in the news recently with fresh details of the ‘Russian Laundromat’, while Ukraine has finally indicted its first big fish, Roman Nasirov, the head of the head of the State Fiscal Service.
Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Per- ceptions Index is the most cited measure of cor- ruption, but how accurate is it? Russia and Ukraine have both been improving their scores, but both are low in the global rankings. Charlie Robertson of Renaissance Capital told delegates at the New Sparta Russian Investment Summit on March 23 that it is better to compare per-capita GDP against corruption as there is a clear relationship.
“Put very simply, if you are rich, you get a high transparency score (100 no corruption, 0 total
corruption) and if you are poor, you suffer from a lot of corruption. The average score for the 10 richest countries with per capita GDP in 2011 of $50,000 or more (in 2011 dollars) is 82/100. The average score for the 32 poorest countries with per capita GDP of less than $1,000 is 28/100,” says Robertson.
The exception to this rule are oil exporters, which are all significantly more corrupt than they should be just in terms of per-capita GDP. In Renaissance Capital’s survey, 18 of the 25 countries that are measurably more corrupt
in the TI survey than per capita GDP measures suggest they should be are all oil exporters, notably Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
$120,000
$90,000
$60,000
$30,000
$0
100
75
50
25
0
GDP per Capita vs.CPI2016
CPI2016
GDP per Capita
GDP per Capita
CPI2016
New Zealand Finland
Switzerland Netherlands
Germany United Kingdom
Austria Ireland
Estonia Poland
Slovenia Spain
Latvia Czech Republic
Slovakia Hungary
Italy Serbia Bulgaria
China Albania Mongolia
Kosovo Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan Ukraine
Kyrgyzstan Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan