The respected anti-corruption organization, Transparency International, released its 2017 ranking of countries based on perceived levels of public sector corruption.  The TPI employs a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

Thailand’s score of 37 for 2017 represented a very slight improvement over its score of 35 for 2016.  Indonesia, Zambia, Peru, Columbia and Brazil also scored 37.  Thailand’s score has consistently remained in the mid 30s and shown little improvement. Although New Zealand had the highest score globally (consistent with prior rankings), the Asia-Pacific region scored poorly with a few exceptions. Transparency International warned that: “rampant corruption across the region threatens to derail plans for greater economic integration.”  TPI reports that it spoke with 20,000+ people in Asia-Pacific about their recent experiences with corruption to prepare its report.

The Bangkok Post reports that:

Tipatrai Saelawong, a Thailand Development Research Institute researcher who studies corruption, said he looks more at the score than the ranking. “The acceptable score is 40, so I am not that happy….

PriceSanond has a very active anti-corruption practice.  For more information on PriceSanond’s anti-corruption practice, click here.