SA is less corrupt than its Brics bloc peers after improving its score for Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions index for 2016, according to its latest report.
The index shows SA’s corruption score on 45, one point up from 2015, although its ranking fell to 64 from 61. Published annually, the index ranks countries in relation to perceptions about the levels of corruption in their public sectors.
Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis said had the survey been done after the State of Capture report was released, SA’s position "may have decreased significantly".
The improvement in SA’s score was good news, he said, but being below 50 still left it among countries deemed to have endemic corruption.
Of greater concern, however, was Russia’s ranking at 131 and a score of 29, as it had been speculated to be the favoured vendor for SA’s new nuclear build.
Frans Cronje, CEO of the IRR, formerly the Institute of Race Relations, said while indices were a useful measure, any quantitative analysis had to be approached with caution.
The IRR had made attempts to track corruption, "but we found no way to quantitatively establish the scale of the problem", Cronje said.
A Statistics SA study published in 2014 showed that 72% of the respondents thought corruption was increasing.
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