Korean bureaucracy ranks in middle among Asian nations

Morale among civil servants in Asia is highest in Hong Kong and lowest in Vietnam. The Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said Monday that a survey on the state of government bureaucracy in Asian countries gave the highest marks of 3.29 to public servants in Hong Kong. PERC polled businesspeople in 13 Asian countries.

Political conditions and standards of economic development were not taken into account in the survey. Under the grading system adopted by PERC, a perfect score was zero and the worst score was 10.

Hong Kong`s first-ranked performance was attributed to its policy of minimizing governmental intervention in the economy. Runner-up Singapore earned 3.60 points, a little worse than last year`s 2.71. Australia tallied 4.00 points, a substantial improvement on 6.19 last year. Together with Japan (6.00) and Malaysia (6.55), Korea (6.33) was ranked in the middle of the pack. China fared better at 7.63 points than 8.39 last year.