Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family are facing corruption charges in the Supreme Court but the Transparency International says the country has improved in its ranking on the annual Corruption Perceptions Index.
Pakistan ranks number 116 of 176 countries that were included in the index for the year 2016.
The index, which ranks countries on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), awarded Pakistan a score of 32 ─ a slight improvement from 2014 and 2015 when the country was given 29 and 30 points, respectively.
Corruption in Pakistan has declined over the past year, a Transparency International report read on Wednesday. Pakistan fared better than most of its South Asian counterparts, coming in second after China in reducing corruption.
Neighbouring India and China shared the 79th rank with a score of 40, while Afghanistan was ranked 169 with 15 points.
The low-ranked countries are “plagued by untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions”, with people frequently encountering situations of bribery and extortion, the anti-graft watchdog said after releasing the index on Wednesday.
It also notes that the rise of populist politicians around the world risks undermining the fight against corruption.
In Pakistan, the Opposition parties often accuse the federal and provincial governments of the present and the past of committing widespread corruption in government projects.
Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N government opposition parties including Pakistan People’s Party Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are fighting legal battles over the issue in the Panamagate Case being heard by the Supreme Court.
The leaked papers, comprising 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, exposed how some of the world’s most powerful people have secretly invested their money offshore, and also implicated Sharif’s sons Hasan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz.
In the Supreme Court case, three of Prime Minister Sharif’s four children are named in the Panama Papers – daughter Maryam, seen to be his political successor and sons Hasan and Hussain – with the records showing they owned London real estate through offshore companies administered by Mossack Fonseca.
