Commission Against Corruption, Macao SAR

Due to the fact that the Transparency International (TI) has reduced its 17 data sources used to calculate Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) to 13 this year, and that being ranked in the Index a country/territory must be covered by a minimum of three of the sources, the adjustments in coverage has removed Macao that was covered by only two sources from the ranking in 2012.

The CPI 2012 was presented on a 0-100 scale, as opposed to the 0-10 scale in the past. According to TI, the updated method enables capturing changes in perceptions of corruption of a country/territory over time. However, due to the update in the methodology, CPI 2012 scores are not comparable with CPI scores in the past.

In 2006, Macao started to be included in the CPI ranking, where data from three sources were used by TI for the grading. While four data sources were used in 2007 and 2008, only three were used starting from 2009, which included an expert assessment and two grades reflecting the perception of corruption in Macao for two consecutive years by an institution.

Traditionally, institutions seldom conduct corruption assessment on Macao, which can be attributed to a few factors, including the geographical factor – these institutions hardly (or seldom) survey the countries/territories in Asia; the population factor – they only survey regions of a certain number of population (e.g. a minimum population of 1 million people); the economic factor – they only assess countries/regions that use international loans. For example, among the data sources for 2011, the report made by the African Development Bank only covered African countries, while the report made by the Asian Development Bank only covered the countries and regions considered to be developing. Only those with a population of over 1 million people, those which were experiencing armed conflicts, or those which were considered to be severely corrupt were surveyed. The World Economic Forum conducted research on 139 and 136 countries which played a crucial role in international trade respectively in 2010 and 2011. The Freedom House only surveyed 29 central European countries and states which had gained independence recently. The World Bank studied the 77 countries which received loan from it.

Among the 13 data sources adopted in 2012, only two of them cover Macao. As a result, Macao is not included in the CPI this year. The two data sources are the reports by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy and the Global Insight. In the former's report, Macao ranked 5.71, 4.68 and 2.85 respectively in 2010, 2011 and 2012 (a lower grade reflects a better integrity situation), showing that the situation of Macao has been constantly improving.

The TI adopts different data sources independently to calculate the CPI. It does not directly evaluate the extent of corruption of different countries and regions, but analyses and ranks them based on evaluations and statistics made by other institutions. The CCAC respects its methodology. At the same time, seven countries and regions are not covered by the CPI of this year due to adjustment of the methodology.

Every data serves as valuable reference. As the government watchdog, the CCAC will continue to fulfil its duties to combat corrupt acts based on the principles of independence and objectivity. The CCAC is willing to obtain different opinions and be supervised by the society. Success can never be achieved by a department's sole efforts. It is necessary for every department to strive the best to fulfil its duties in order to build an effective, transparent and clean administrative system. The participation and support of the entire society is also essential.