Saturday, January 28, 2017
Kabul (BNA) The Presidential Palace on Wednesday renewed its commitment to combating corruption, saying Afghanistan was no longer among the three most corrupt countries.
Mohammad Haroon Chakhansori, the presidential palace spokesman, told a press conference here on Wednesday, saying Afghanistan was for the first time perceived the world’s seventh most corrupt nation on the global index.
“Earlier, we were ranked among the world’s three most corrupt countries, but now we are not among them and we have improved the most. It’s a good omen for Afghans and future of the country,” he added.
“As President Ghani has promised to the people that he will seriously fight against corruption and fortunately the government’s toleration of corruption is zero, which means corruption has been seriously fought and will be so,” he further said.
According to him, corruption changed into a culture over the past few decades, but now a proper environment and structure had been established by the government. He dubbed corruption a huge dilemma, saying steps had been taken recently, such as the establishment of the National Procurement Commission, to combat the menace.
Chakhansori said 107 local and international companies were blacklisted over committing negligence in implementing contracts or not functioning in line with laws. As many as $6 billion Afghanis were prevented from being embezzled in the Ministry of Defense (MoD)’s contracts.
Afghanistan improved the most in 2016 as its score on the Transparency International (TI) index rose four points, the anti-corruption watchdog group said in its latest report released on Wednesday. However, still Afghanistan was ranked 169th, just ahead of Libya, Sudan and Yemen and perceived the world’s seventh most corrupted country.
Earlier, Afghanistan had been the world’s first or second most corrupt country but in 2014 Afghanistan jumped to 3rd and in 2015 to 4th position.
