Bandar Seri Begawan - The efforts to stamp out corruption in Brunei Darussalam have been recognised by independent agencies, allowing Brunei its inaugural entry into the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2009.

During a special press conference held yesterday, Deputy Director of Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Hj Abdul Raub Hj Mohammad Yassin, said that after achieving a rank of 39th among 180 countries, Brunei will work to build on this and intensify its efforts to improve on the rankings that was released on Wednesday.

According to ACB, the CPI is an aggregate indicator that ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians.

The ranking is based on the accumulated score.

A score of 10 would indicate a country being least corrupted, while scoring 1 would be the worst case scenario, that is countries which are most corrupted. Brunei has managed to get a score of 5.5 while overall it came 39 out of 180 countries and in the Asia Pacific region it actually ranked seventh. Within Asean's 10 countries, Brunei Darussalam is actually second only to Singapore. At the very least, ACB would like to maintain the status quo.

"The world organisations and non-Government Organisations (NGOs) are watching us as independent observers. Within that we need to keep up our standards."
"Now we are second to Singapore, we don't want in the future to be third to Singapore, that would be wrong," he said during the press conference held at the bureau's headquarters.

"Now we need to keep up our preventive measures and also keep up our enforcement," said Hj Abdul Raub, stressing that after achieving the levels in the rankings, the bureau would like to redouble their efforts.

The press conference also highlighted that the bureau is targeting to break the top 10 ranking in the near future and improve on its CPI standing.

Previously Brunei was not included in the CPI as a country must be assessed by a minimum of three different sources. This time around four agencies which were not named had carried out their own in quiries.

For Brunei Darussalam it is considered a significant achievement, in light of the bureau being relatively young and somewhat short in experience when compared to its counterparts around the world.

"In general, Brunei Darussalam inclusion in the CPI has been commendable which goes to show that the efforts and strategies undertaken by the bureau as a whole has raised the nation's profile as among the most effective and credible nation in combating the scourge of corruption," said a statement released by ACB.

Brunei's efforts in combating graft have been well documented as a three-pronged approach chat are Education, Prevention and Investigation.-- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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