Macedonia Makes no Advances in the Fight Against Corruption

20 October 2005

Zoran Jacev, the President of Transparency Macedonia, said the Macedonian efforts to fight the corruption seem to be frozen into one place, according to its position in 103rd place on the global list of corruption, published last week by Transparency International.

Zoran Jacev at the presentation of the Global Corruption Perception List

Jacev added that although the fall of 6 places (on the previous list, Macedonia was ranked 97th) could be seen as a deterioration of the situation, there was no difference in the index points � Macedonian corruption index is 2.7.

�Our current ranking simply means that several countries have the same index points. There are no surveys that would measure the actual effort to fight the corruption, but the fall of six places shows that we have little achievement that would enable us to declare some success�, sais Jacev.

The overall picture regarding fight against corruption in Macedonia, he added, is rather gloomy, there are no results, which is measured by competent people.

Transparency Macedonia agrees that the ranking of a country in the global corruption list does influence the business community and the potential investors, although the corruption in itself may not have an economic price to be paid.

In terms of the Western Balkans Region, Macedonia is ranked in the ninth place, followed only by Albania. The best ranked country is Bulgaria, 55th overall. Turkey is second best ranked Balkan country (65), and the third is Croatia (75th place).

According to Jacev, some 16 different surveys are taken in each country, during which businesspeople, institutions, scholars and analysts are interviewed. Seven surveys were made in Macedonia.

"The aim of the list is not to cause change of regime or government, but to help design the anti-corruption measures, to initiate public debate on this issue. If we don�t talk about it, we won�t take any action�, said Jacev in his statement for the press.