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| Reference Material |
| RP listed among worsening bureaucracies By Agence France Presse February 25, 2002, Philippine Daily Inquirer SINGAPORE � Expatriate businessmen single out the Philippines and Indonesia as having a pattern of worsening bureaucracy, according to a regional survey that found much of the rest of Asia awash with rules and red tape. Singapore has toppled Hong Kong as Asia�s least bureaucratic economy from the rating of a newly released survey by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC). Businessmen dislike systems where there are so many rules it is difficult to find out what is possible and what is not, and decisions are open to interpretation by different authorities, the PERC said. �A lot of systems in Asia� fall into this category, the report said���.. Of the 12 economies rated on a scale of 0 to 10, only Singapore (3.10) and Hong Kong (3.64) achieved better than a passing mark. Hong Kong, the former British colony, was rated the most flexible system in terms of having the fewest rules, but appeared to have been punished for a deteriorating standard of spoken English. Singapore, which has donned the mantle of Asia�s least bureaucratic economy, found favor with the business community for providing a tough regulatory environment where clear rules were enforced in a no-nonsense manner��� South Korea, bottom of the pack six years ago, has shot up to third with a 5.50 rating �because senior politicians have become more sensitive to the needs of business and they have been passing legislation to improve the regulatory environment. This has forced civil servants to change their practices in ways that have promoted greater efficiency.� Behind South Korea, the regional bureaucracy scores were Taiwan (6.17), Malaysia and Japan (7.0), Thailand (7.89), China (8.0), Vietnam (8.13), the Philippines (8.18), Indonesia (9.33) and India (9.50). Indonesia and the Philippines were moving in the opposite direction because the pay for civil servants was very low �which hurts morale and encourages corruption and inefficiency,� according to the report��.. ***** |