FROM time to time in this column, I have returned to the question of how our international image as a nation impacts our development.Simply put, a good image shows the world that we are a good place to live, work and invest in – a bad image inspires just the opposite.

Coming fresh out of hosting an event, CARIFESTA X, which undoubtedlyraised Guyana’s profile in the Region, we have just been hit with the broadside of a low rating, a slippage in fact from last year’s, in the Transparency International corruption index.

According to Transparency International, Guyana ranks the second lowest in the Region in terms of perceived corruption, higher only than the perennial Regional pariah, Haiti .  The report establishes a nexus between perceived corruption, albeit by its own yardstick, and under-development in the countries it lists as most corrupt.  According to one newspaper article:
“Professor Johann Graf Lambsdorff of the University of Passau, who carries out the Index for TI, said an improvement in the CPI by one point (on the 10-point scale) increases capital inflows by 0.5% of a country’s gross domestic product and average incomes by as much as 4%.”
What I found ironical in this  analysis is that what is missing from the equation is the projection, for example, of the decrease in capital inflow, and the corollary negative impact, that such reports – particularly a perception-based report such as TI’s – cause within in the economies of the countries under review.
It is understood that organisations such as Transparency International need a reason to perpetuate their funding and support.  However, considering the devastating impact these reports have on the countries they pronounce judgment on, what is startling is that there seems to be no recourse for the states pronounced upon to explain any misperceptions.
What is telling about the modus operandi of such reports is that there is no mechanism for appeal, clarification and the widespread dissemination of a more accurate assessment either during the writing up of these reports or after.  It is frankly not in their interest to have such a mechanism or mechanisms in place.
Granted that in complex environments such as the United States , it is harder to establish indices of evaluation of anything, much less the”perception of corruption”.  Yet this very complexity warrants greater scrutiny than we are liable to find in reports from Transparency International and other watchdog organisations.  Reads a recent article in The Economist:
“Thanks to the information technology, they could design myriad complex derivatives, some of them linked to mortgages. By combining debt and derivatives, the banks created a new machine that could originate and distribute prodigious quantities of risk to a baffling array of counterparties…This system worked; indeed, at its simplest, it still does, spreading risk, promoting economic efficiency and providing cheap capital. Yet over the past decade this entangled system also plainly fed on itself…Thanks to what, in hindsight, has proven disastrously lax regulation, banks did not then have to lay aside capital in case something went wrong.”
Something, as is obvious, did go wrong.  The American financial crisis of present is directly linked to corruption in a country where the lines between government and the financial sector, in spite of a sophisticated regulatory and oversight regime, are indeed less lines than grey areas and where the free rein given to the financial services sector was tantamount to enablement of the perverse practices which underwrote the devastation.
The impact of that very real devastation on developing economies is potentially more harmful than anything TI can pronounce upon in many of the countries that have scored poorly on its annual report card, affecting everything from local central banks to the ability of immigrants to remit money at the levels they have been doing for the past few years.
Reports such as TI’s Corruption Index undoubtedly have their place in establishing an environment of accountability in a globalised world. However, we who receive the brunt of their negativity have to raise our voices in objection whenever our image is tarnished.
Written By Keith Burrowes