Corruption - A social disease (Part 125): Namibia's Governance and Corruption trend 1998-2016
Johan Coetzee - Transparency International (TI) is an international agency that rates countries annually based on perceptions about governance and corruption.
The rating is out of 10. Ten is an indication of no corruption.
Perceptions are not accurate because they tend be based on allegations that are not supported by facts and/or evidence. However, perceptions studies are popular because evidence about corruption is very limited. Evidence tends to be destroyed, for example in the Avid case where board members did not fulfill their fiduciary duties and approximately N$30 million seems to have been embezzled via risky investment agencies. According to court proceedings, supporting documents were shred and computers destroyed.
One contributor to the fact that no minister, deputy minister and/or permanent secretary have served jail is that evidence is not readily available and money gained from corruption tend not be deposited in bank accounts and is channeled via a myriad of international accounts and used for opportunistic spending (Bekker).
In the context of very limited evidence about corruption, consecutive perception indices provide indications of the comparative level of corruption and governance in a country relative to the international context. Investors apply perception studies in assessing a country’s investment potential. Numerous perception studies exist about governance and corruption. The most influential one is most likely TI.
The graphic shows Namibia's rating by TI from 1998 to 2016.
LITTLE IMPROVEMENT
The overall trend is stable, however with no improvement.
The mean/average for the previous 10 years is 5/10, and for the period 1998 - 2016, it is 4.8/10. The middle value is 4.2.
The mode for the previous 10 years (the value that occurs the most) is 4.5/10. The mode is much more valuable than the average. The average is not of much value because it provides very limited indication of the skewness of a trend.
What is positive - is that Namibia has improved during the previous five years and we demonstrate a relative stable performance over the whole period. However, compared to the rest of the world, Namibia has deteriorated.
Other countries have improved while Namibia has become less competitive in terms of investment and governance. If we look at the entire trend, we observe that since 1998 we increased our rating consecutively for five years. Then we seem to free fall down a cliff during 2002/2003. Since 2004 we maintained our position for eight years until we started improving for four years since 2012.
We seemed to have reached the summit during 2015 and is either stabilising or going slowly down based on the ratings of 2015 and 2016. It could be that we are going down in a second cycle of deterioration, hopefully less severe compared to the previous downward trend.
Based on continuous mismanagement of public funds, very limited political motivation for reducing corruption and an increased risk of losing voter support if cutting off those voters that benefited from the spoils of corruption (because their lifestyles are dependent on corruption), signals are not positive for increased positive ratings during the next three years.
References
Bekker, N. 2017. Personal conversation with the Chief Investigator of the Anti-Corruption Commission of Namibia, 6 November, Windhoek.
Transparency International. 1998-2016. Corruption Perception Indices.
[email protected]
The rating is out of 10. Ten is an indication of no corruption.
Perceptions are not accurate because they tend be based on allegations that are not supported by facts and/or evidence. However, perceptions studies are popular because evidence about corruption is very limited. Evidence tends to be destroyed, for example in the Avid case where board members did not fulfill their fiduciary duties and approximately N$30 million seems to have been embezzled via risky investment agencies. According to court proceedings, supporting documents were shred and computers destroyed.
One contributor to the fact that no minister, deputy minister and/or permanent secretary have served jail is that evidence is not readily available and money gained from corruption tend not be deposited in bank accounts and is channeled via a myriad of international accounts and used for opportunistic spending (Bekker).
In the context of very limited evidence about corruption, consecutive perception indices provide indications of the comparative level of corruption and governance in a country relative to the international context. Investors apply perception studies in assessing a country’s investment potential. Numerous perception studies exist about governance and corruption. The most influential one is most likely TI.
The graphic shows Namibia's rating by TI from 1998 to 2016.
LITTLE IMPROVEMENT
The overall trend is stable, however with no improvement.
The mean/average for the previous 10 years is 5/10, and for the period 1998 - 2016, it is 4.8/10. The middle value is 4.2.
The mode for the previous 10 years (the value that occurs the most) is 4.5/10. The mode is much more valuable than the average. The average is not of much value because it provides very limited indication of the skewness of a trend.
What is positive - is that Namibia has improved during the previous five years and we demonstrate a relative stable performance over the whole period. However, compared to the rest of the world, Namibia has deteriorated.
Other countries have improved while Namibia has become less competitive in terms of investment and governance. If we look at the entire trend, we observe that since 1998 we increased our rating consecutively for five years. Then we seem to free fall down a cliff during 2002/2003. Since 2004 we maintained our position for eight years until we started improving for four years since 2012.
We seemed to have reached the summit during 2015 and is either stabilising or going slowly down based on the ratings of 2015 and 2016. It could be that we are going down in a second cycle of deterioration, hopefully less severe compared to the previous downward trend.
Based on continuous mismanagement of public funds, very limited political motivation for reducing corruption and an increased risk of losing voter support if cutting off those voters that benefited from the spoils of corruption (because their lifestyles are dependent on corruption), signals are not positive for increased positive ratings during the next three years.
References
Bekker, N. 2017. Personal conversation with the Chief Investigator of the Anti-Corruption Commission of Namibia, 6 November, Windhoek.
Transparency International. 1998-2016. Corruption Perception Indices.
[email protected]
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