By Stuart Price in London

Uganda’s international corruption ranking improved over the last year, according to Transparency International’s (TI) rating.

Launching a new report at a press conference in London on Wednesday, Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen said, “Corruption in large-scale public projects is a daunting obstacle to sustainable development and results in a major loss of public funds needed for education, healthcare and poverty alleviation, both in developed and developing countries.”

TI is a leading non-governmental organisation which fights corruption around the world. The new Corruption Perceptions Index raises Uganda from the 113th place last year to 102nd alongside Eritrea, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia.
However, TI said Uganda remained among the 60 countries around the world with rampant corruption. It said Uganda’s public sector was plagued by bribery.

It placed Uganda among the 106 countries out of the 146 surveyed, which scored less than five out of 10 on the index. Ten is a clean score and the lower the rating, the more corrupt a country is perceived to be.

Kenya was 129, Tanzania came 90th while DR Congo was 133rd.
The least corrupt countries were Finland and New Zealand, which scored 9.7 and 9.6 respectively. Nigeria, the most corrupt in Africa, came third from bottom, with a score of 1.6. It fared marginally better than Bangladesh and Haiti which were at the bottom with a 1.5 score.

Eigen said graft robbed countries of their potential and that the world’s poorest countries needed support to fight the problem.
“If we hope to reach the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in abject poverty by 2015, governments need to seriously tackle corruption in public contracting,” Eigen said.

TI estimated that bribery in government procurement around the world tops US$400b per year.

Speaking from the Colombian capital Bogotá, TI vice-chair Rosa Inés Ospina Robledo said, “Across the globe, international donors and national governments must do more to ensure transparency in public procurement by introducing no-bribery clauses into all major projects.”

She said tough sanctions were needed against foreign and national companies caught bribing. She said these could include forfeit of the contract and blacklisting from future bidding.

In Kampala, the Inspector General of Government, Jotham Tumwesigye, said the report was a true reflection of corruption in Uganda, reports Emmy Allio.
“It is an indication of what is on the ground. It is the effect of measures taken recently to fight corruption,” he said. Asked whether his recommendations were respected by government departments, Tumwesigye said, “In some quarters our recommendations are now being followed. There is a positive trend in many aspects.”
He asked for greater effort by anti-corruption agencies and the Government “if the momentum is to be maintained.”