SINGAPORE : Regional financial centres Singapore and Hong
Kong have the most efficient bureaucracies, according to the survey
of expatriate business executives by the Political and Economic
Risk Consultancy (PERC) on Wednesday.
India, Indonesia and the Philippines have Asia's most
inefficient bureaucracies, with red tape a constant blight to
citizens and deterrent to foreign investment, the survey
said.
Government bureaucracies in some Asian countries have become "power
centres" in their own right, allowing them to effectively resist
efforts toward reforms by politicians and appointed officials, the
Hong Kong-based firm said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's failure to carry
out reforms contributed to the resignation last month of respected
finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who accepted a senior
position at the World Bank, PERC said.
"Despite President Susilo's strong election mandate, he lacks the
power to really shake up Indonesia's bureaucracy," the consultancy
said.
Ranking 12 key countries and territories on a scale from one to 10,
with 10 as the worst possible score, the business executives in the
survey rated India as having the region's most inefficient
bureaucracy.
India had a score of 9.41, followed by Indonesia (8.59), the
Philippines (8.37), Vietnam (8.13) and China (7.93).
Malaysia was in sixth place from the bottom with a score of 6.97,
followed by Taiwan (6.60), Japan (6.57), South Korea (6.13) and
Thailand (5.53).
Singapore was ranked has having the most efficient bureaucracy,
with a score of 2.53, followed by Hong Kong with 3.49.
PERC said 1,373 middle and senior expatriate executives took part
in the survey carried out earlier this year.
Singapore was also number one and Hong Kong was in third place
globally in the World Bank's latest survey on the ease of doing
business, which covered 183 economies.
In India, "politicians frequently promise to reform and revitalise
the Indian bureaucracy, but they have been ineffective in doing so
-- mainly because the civil service is a power centre in its own
right," PERC said.
Dealing with India's bureaucracy "can be one of the most
frustrating experiences for any Indian, let alone a foreign
investor," it added.
Bureaucratic red tape is both a "serious problem" in China and
India, "but the differences in the political systems of these two
countries have made inertia much worse in India than in China," it
said.
In the Philippines, the government "goes through the motion" of
addressing problems of bureaucratic red tape "but nothing has
really made a dent in the problem," PERC said.
"Illegal fixing is well-entrenched in the Philippine bureaucracy,"
it said, referring to people called "fixers" who offer to
facilitate transactions with government offices for a fee and often
in collaboration with corrupt employees.
- AFP /ls