KUALA LUMPUR: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak has called on all Malaysians to fight corruption as the country aspires to improve its position in the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI).
Malaysia has moved up to 50th spot among 175 countries in the CPI 2014 ranking, up from the 53rd position last year.
"Although an encouraging achievement, we must not rest on our laurels. Our target is to be at the 30th spot by 2020. And to achieve that, we need everyone to work together in the fight against corruption," the prime minister said this in his blog on Thursday.
Najib noted that the Government had implemented numerous initiatives to combat graft, with fighting corruption being one of the National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) of the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) that was launched in 2010.
Back then, Najib said, Malaysia was ranked 56th in the CPI.
Among others, Najib attributed Malaysia's achievement in the latest ranking to the efforts of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), Integrity and Standard Compliance Department (ISCD) in the police force and the Performance Management Delivery Unit (Pemandu).
He said at this position, Malaysia was the second best in South-East Asia and chalked up its best performance in 10 years.
"Alhamdulillah, our transformation programme is on the right track," Najib said, pointing out that the CPI ranking was another encouraging indicator in addition to the improvement recorded by Malaysia in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Report and GDP growth of 6.1%, the highest in South-East Asia for the first nine months of this year. – Bernama
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