In fact, the Philippines is getting more corrupt under Duterte, dropping 13 notches in the 2017 Corruption Index published recently by Transparency International.
That’s on top of six notches it dropped in 2016, which had already pushed the country closer to highly corrupt Asian countries like Pakistan, and far away from countries like Singapore and New Zealand that are almost corruption free.
To be fair, the findings of the survey should be interpreted with a great deal of caution, for a couple of reasons. One of them is that they are based on other surveys and polls, and therefore, subject to aggregation errors. Another reason is that some of the data included in these surveys go back a couple of years ago, and therefore, reflect more the policies of the previous administrations and less of the Duterte administration.
Meanwhile, other surveys show that Filipinos are better off today than they were two years ago. Like a Gallup survey, which finds an increase in the percentage of Filipinos who consider their lives positive enough to rate it as "thriving" since Duterte assumed office.
Specifically, 28% of Filipinos consider themselves thriving in 2017 compared to 26% in 2016, pushing the Philippines up one notch in the ranking of the Asian-Pacific countries.
For an obvious reason: Duterte's economy is running on high gear, ranked the world’s 10th fastest growing economy in the world in 2017.
That’s according to the World Bank’s latest edition of Global Economic Prospects.
Still, fighting corruption is a big bet for Philippines and for foreign investors buying Philippine stocks. Why? Because it will determine whether the Philippines to move forward to become a developed country or slide back to the frontier status.
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