Although Bhutan’s overall Corruption Perceptions Index improved significantly last year, the report highlights that there is not much improvement in tackling corruption in the public sector. This means Bhutan’s anti-corruption efforts have not yielded noticeable progress, as unethical practices among legislators, misuse of power by executives, and corruption within the public sector still remain prevalent.
Bhutan’s Corruption Perceptions Index is based on data from four sources: the World Bank’s Country Policy & Institutional Assessment, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, the Global Insight Country Risk Ratings and the Varieties of Democracy Index. Although the first three reported a positive assessment, Bhutan lagged in terms of the Varieties of Democracy Index.
The index measured corruption through six key indicators: Executive Bribery and Corrupt Exchanges, Executive Embezzlement and Theft, Public Sector Corrupt Exchanges, Public Sector Theft, Judicial Corruption Decisions, and Legislative Corrupt Activities.
The public sector and executive corruption indices measured bribery, kickbacks, and embezzlement by executives and public officials for personal or family gain. Judicial corruption assessed undocumented payments influencing legal decisions, while legislative corruption tracked lawmakers’ financial misconduct.
The report revealed that while the 2023 scores remained unchanged from 2022, ‘public sector corrupt exchanges’ continued to score low at 0.77 out of 4, indicating persistent corruption in the public sector. This is further supported by the Anti-Corruption Commission’s Annual Report 2023-2024, which found that 88 out of 138 individuals implicated in corruption cases were from the public sector in the Financial Year 2023-2024.
According to the report, the consistently low score for ‘judicial corruption decision’ highlights the growing vulnerability of judicial services to corruption.
Additionally, the executive corruption index and the legislative corruption indicator showed better scores. However, the report notes that the fluctuation in the scores over the years highlights the need to strengthen existing anti-corruption mechanisms.
Overall, Bhutan’s Corruption Perceptions Index score jumped from 68 in 2023 to 72 last year. This improvement places Bhutan as the 18th cleanest country in the world.
Tashi Dekar
Edited by Kipchu
