Current initiatives being taken by the government to stamp out corruption will begin to take effect later, Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon told the media yesterday.

Responding to Guyana 's poor rating among 163 countries in the 2006 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) Report released by Transparency International (TI), Dr. Luncheon stated that the administration has not awaited reports to deal with the issue.

The report places Guyana at 121 with a CPI of 2.5, making it the second lowest after Haiti in the Caribbean region. Haiti , with a CPI of 1.8, is ranked last.

In 2005, Guyana received a similar CPI of 2.5, and ranked 117 of 158 countries.

This year's CPI Report shows Guyana ranking alongside Benin , Gambia , Honduras , Nepal , Philippines , Russia , Rwanda and Swaziland .

“We have programmes that are in existence addressing various features that have been identified that could be used to inform transparency and accountability. Many of them are ongoing, and our belief is that the way they have been structured that the benefits will recoup over time,” Dr. Luncheon stated.

The CPI is a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys that poll perceptions of public sector corruption in 163 countries around the world, the greatest scope of any CPI to date.

It scores countries on a scale from zero to ten, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and ten indicating low levels of perceived corruption.

Almost three-quarters of the countries in the CPI scored below five, including all low-income countries and all but two African states; this indicates that most countries in the world face serious perceived levels of domestic corruption.

Seventy one countries scored below three, indicating that corruption is perceived as rampant. Haiti has the lowest score at 1.8; Guinea , Iraq and Myanmar share the penultimate slot, each with a score of 1.9. Finland , Iceland and New Zealand share the top score of 9.6.

TI, a German-based civil society organisation, states that the report points to a strong correlation between corruption and poverty, with a concentration of impoverished states at the bottom of the ranking.

According to the organisation, the weak performance of many countries indicates that the facilitators of corruption continue to assist political elites to launder, store, and otherwise profit from unjustly acquired wealth, which often includes looted state assets.

Dr. Luncheon posited that most of the work at the local level has been concentrated on reforms, particularly in the financial sector, because most of the assessment done by agencies that contribute to the report by TI is work done within the financial sector of countries being assessed.

He noted that procurement continues to be a major problem worldwide, with public officers engaging in nefarious deeds to enhance their personal wealth; but in Guyana , this is a particular area where the administration has joined with stakeholders to formulate a new procurement law.

“Our anticipation is that this law will be further amended, and the establishment in the constitutional reform process of a much better governance system to deal with public procurement…I believe that the perceptions that have contributed to the report from TI reflect current concerns, and it is in the context of the implementation of our reforms and the successes that come from the implementation that many of the strongly held views and perceptions will change,” Dr. Luncheon stated.