Corruption ranking covered corruption cases under Mahama – Government

The government has explained that Ghana’s poor performance in the 2017 Global Corruption Perception Index also took into account corruption cases recorded under the John Mahama administration, which left power in January 2017.

The government’s Spokesperson on Governance and Legal Affairs, Herbert Krapa, explained that the report was not an indication that the current New Patriotic Party [NPP] government was corrupt.

Ghana dropped 11 places from the 2016 ranking to place 81 out of 180 countries in the 2017 Corruption Perception index. Ghana’s mark out of a total of 100 was 40, down from 43, which the country attained in the 2016 index.

In an interview with Citi News, Mr. Krapa referenced the Ghana Integrity Initiative’s (GII) technical report, which shows that corruption perception for a given year takes into account two years.

This would mean that the 2017 corruption index also covered 2016, where there was a lack of will to tackle corruption from the Mahama government, according to Mr. Krapa.

“When you look at the technical report which GII added, such that it is a period of two years in which the perception is compiled, when you look at 2016, in that year, you know all the corruption allegations that came to the fore: the bus branding saga, Ghana Standards Authority, NCA [National Communications Authority], Electoral Commission allegations and a host of them that the [Mahama] government did not show any commitment to fighting revelations and scandals that had been made public.”

Mr. Krapa further assured that the Akufo-Addo administration was committed to fighting corruption with all the seriousness.

“Now the perception would be that the current administration has done very little to fight the corruption that the John Mahama administration is said to have supervised. I can assure that whatever report, whatever these exposes… would have exposed and made clear that corruption was particularly present, all of them would be prosecuted and the law courts would determine whether there was actual corruption or not.”

What the GII report said

The GII noted that Ghana’s score of 40 points was likely a reflection of the insufficient investigations, prosecutions and sanctioning of corrupt acts, per data sources from 2016.

“It is important to remind ourselves of the plethora of corruption exposés during the period in question which might have influenced the perception of the respondents to the surveys as well as the business experts – examples include the 2016 election-related corruption issues, Bus Branding scandal, Ghana Standards Authority $1.2m Corruption Scandal, Central Medical Stores Arson Saga, National Lottery Authority bribery and numerous adverse findings in annual Audit Reports on the Public Sector,” the statement accompanying the current index stated.

Ghana’s past performance

The report, put together by Transparency International, ranks countries annually by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.

In the 2016 Corruption Perception Index ranking, Ghana dropped four percentage points, scoring 43 out of a clean score of 100.

In 2015, Ghana improved slightly on 2014 with a rank of 56 out of 168 countries and a score of 47.

Thus, Ghana slid back by one percentage point from the 48 points scored in 2014.