Corruption in the Philippines

The Philippines suffers from widespread corruption. Means of corruption include graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals, nepotism, and patronage.

Transparency International's 2016 Corruption Perception Index ranks the country 101th place out of 176 countries. This is better than the Philippines' 129th out of 178,ranking in 2011 with a 2.6 CPI, in Transparency International's list. The CPI score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 10, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 10 means that a country is perceived as very clean.

Transparency International-Philippines said some of the factors that contributed to the Philippines' (2.6) slight jump are the improvement in government service, and cutting red tape.

The Philippines' corruption further declined in 2014 upgrading its ranking on Transparency.org CPI from 94th to 85th in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

For the list of rankings per country per year, please see http://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview

The Philippine political arena is mainly arranged and operated by families or alliances of families, rather than organised around the voting for political parties.

Called the Padrino System, one gains favor, promotion, or political appointment through family affiliation (nepotism) or friendship (cronyism), as opposed to one's . The Padrino System in the Philippines has been the source of many controversies and corruption.

It has been an open secret that one cannot join the political arena of the Philippines without mastery of the Padrino System. From the lowest Barangay official, to the President of the Republic, it is expected that one gains political debts and dispenses political favor to advance one's career or influence, if not wealth.

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