Thailand ranked 4th least corrupt country in Asia

Thailand – a nation run by a semi-elected military government – was ranked 35th in the world and 4th in Asia in the U.S. News‘ “Least Corrupt Countries” list.

Yesterday, American media company U.S. News released its annual “Best Countries” ranking, featuring 73 countries all over the world. Data was collected from a worldwide survey with more than 17,000 participants.

Countries are ranked from best to worst based on ten sub-rankings including, “adventure, agility, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power, quality of life and social purpose.”

One factor feeding into the “open for business” sub-ranking was corruption. Participants ranked the 73 countries from least to most corrupt…

“These are the top countries viewed as not corrupt by global survey respondents. This quality factors into the overall U.S. News Best Countries rankings and Open for Business subranking. For more information on the rankings, see our methodology.”

Given Thailand’s relentless and rampant corruption scandals, Thailand scored pretty highly on the list as the 35th least corrupt country in the world and the 4th least corrupt country in Asia.

Thailand was also rated the 13th best country for capitalists by global respondents because it was perceived as not corrupt and business-friendly.

The top three least corrupt countries in the world are Sweden, Australia, and Canada, according to the global survey. The top three least corrupt countries in Asia are Japan, Singapore, and South Korea.

For the overall ranking, Thailand was, as same as last year, ranked as the 28th “best country in the world” with a score of 47.7. The top three best countries in the world this year are Switzerland, Germany, and Canada.

Perhaps the global respondents are unaware of corruption scandals in all of Thailand’s various institutions making headlines day-in-and-day-out.

In August, CCTV footage recorded a known gangster stealing money from an illegal casino in Bangkok. The media poked fun at officers from Din Daeng Police Station, who claimed they “didn’t know” the casino existed, despite it being located just 650 metres from the police station.

Earlier this year, then-acting-Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan ordered an end to all corruption in the Royal Thai Police force. He said he won’t stand for corruption in the force, despite himself being the focus of a 40 million baht luxury watch scandal back in 2017.