Somalia terms TI graft report false and unreliable

By T.Roble

Somalia has dismissed as ‘unreliable and falsehood’ the recently released Transparency International report rating the Horn of Africa country as the most corrupt for the 11th year running.

Finance Minister Abdirahman Beileh said the information relied upon by the global anti-graft watchdog Transparency International failed to capture the accurate picture of Somalia’s efforts in fighting corruption adding TI ignored the government’s invitation to visit the country.

“We see the assessment of Transparency International as false and unreliable. We contacted them several times, we wrote a letter six to seven months ago to come to the country and assess the situation but they did not respond,” Beileh said Thursday.

According to the report, Somalia got a Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of 9 emerging as the most corrupt country in the world. The watchdog said it based its findings on 13 data sources from 12 independent institutions.

CPI is an indicator of perceptions of public sector corruption, that is administrative and political corruption and is therefore not on the levels of corruption of entire nations or societies, or of their policies, or the activities of their private sector, TI says.

Beileh noted it was unfortunate TI released the report without ‘considering our request’.

According to Transparency International, a country/territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and a 100 means that a country is perceived as very clean.

A country’s rank indicates its position relative to the other countries/territories included in the index and may therefore change depending on the number of countries included in the index.

IMF POSITIVE OUTLOOK

In its periodic assessment report late last month, the IMF sounded upbeat on Somalia’s public sector and fiscal reform efforts noting the efforts were clear indicators of progress towards debt relief.

“Directors welcomed the significant improvement in budget execution and fiscal performance in 2017 as well as the authorities’ drive to implement several important tax reforms that contributed to improving the fiscal outturn,” IMF said in a statement.

“The authorities are continuing to improve Somalia’s fiscal framework, including its revenue collection performance,” the lender said. “They have taken steps to reform the national currency and developing the country’s financial sector.”