S’pore stays in league of best run countries
By ANNA TEO
(SINGAPORE) Singapore is still among the best for government effectiveness and regulatory quality, but is just middle of the pack for civil liberties.
The Republic has again been ranked among the world’s best-run 16 or so countries, scoring in the top percentile in five of six measures of governance in a World Bank study of 212 countries and territories.
In Governance Matters, 2007: Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2006, released yesterday in Washington, DC, World Bank researchers rate Singapore particularly strongly - as they have in earlier editions of the study - for government effectiveness (quality of policy formulation and implementation, and of the civil service) and regulatory quality (reflected in sound, market-friendly policies).
On both these indicators, Singapore obtained near-100 per cent scores, and is behind only Denmark for government effectiveness, and behind only Hong Kong for regulatory quality.
Singapore also scored for control of corruption, ranking fifth behind top-placed Finland, Iceland, Denmark and New Zealand.
The other two indicators where Singapore ranks in the top percentile - that is, 90 per cent of countries rank below - are rule of law (public confidence in the quality of contract enforcement, the police and the courts) and political stability.
In the previous year’s study, Singapore’s political stability garnered only an 80th percentile ranking.
But Singapore continues to score relatively poorly for ‘voice and accountability’ - which measures political, civil and human rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and a free media - though its score has improved. It now ranks above some 47 per cent of the countries in the study, up from 38 per cent last year.
While the World Bank study reports country scores as percentile ranks for each of the six measures of governance, it does not compile overall country rankings. Its main focus is on broad global and regional trends over the period.
The data shows only six countries - Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland - with top-percentile scores in all the six measures. Another 10 countries, including Singapore, have 90th percentile scores in five measures. The others are Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The 2007 study is the sixth update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators, a project to develop evidence-based measures over the past decade to track the quality of institutions, improve governance and address corruption.
One feature of the latest report is a range of ‘likely’ values that accompany the percentile ranks for each country, with the note that there is a 90 per cent chance that the country’s governance rank is between these ‘lower’ and ‘upper’ values.
‘Governance is difficult to measure, and so all measures of governance are necessarily imprecise,’ the report says.
Overall, the study finds that a number of countries - including in Africa - are making ’significant strides’ in improving governance. Emerging economies, in particular, are matching up to rich countries. Over a dozen developing countries such as Slovenia, Chile, Botswana, Estonia, Uruguay, the Czech Republic and Costa Rica score higher on key dimensions of governance than industrialised countries such as Greece or Italy. But, on average, the quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade, despite individual country improvements.
For the countries that have done well, a similar number have fared worse in a number of governance dimensions, the report notes, citing Zimbabwe, Cote D’Ivoire, Belarus and Venezuela. ‘And in many other countries no significant change in either direction is yet apparent.’
The Business Times, 11 July 2007
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