Accra, Oct. 24, GNA - Professor John Evans Atta Mills, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Presidential Candidate, on Friday said the Transparency International Index 2003 Report was a sad and worrying commentary not only on corruption in Government, but the fabric of the whole Ghanaian society.

This year's performance, "the first to be compiled exclusively under President John Agyekum Kufuor's Administration was, therefore, certainly not a performance that any patriotic Ghanaian should be enthused about and we must all work at improving our performance next year".

The NDC Elections 2004 Presidential Candidate said the score of 3.3 out of 10 and the position 72 out of 133 competing countries on the World Corruption Perception Index was a disastrous and embarrassing performance for the country.

Prof. Mills a former Commissioner of Internal Revenue Services was addressing a press conference in Accra at which the party stated its position on the Transparency International's 2003 Corruption Perception Index Report.

He said the challenge was to consolidate and strengthen the legal and institutional anti-corruption agencies that already existed, and to ensure that they improved upon their performance.

Analysing the Index, Prof. Mils said the 72nd position represented a drop from last year's 50th position and compared unfavourably with 1999 when even though the performance was the same 3.3, the country was placed at the slightly better position of 65th.

It is also instructive to note that last year's fairly respectable performance of 3.9 was based on data compiled between 2000 and 2002 and, therefore, was attributable to both the NDC and NPP Governments.

Prof. Mills said "clearly, the NDC Government must have taken a cue from its under-performance in 1999 and improved on it in 2000...no wonder in 2000 itself, Ghana under the NDC Government moved from 3.3 to 3.5 and improved its overall position from 65th to 52nd.

The Former Vice President said "the foremost and time-tested anti-corruption agency that we have, both in terms of pre-empting corruption, through the internal audit system, and uncovering corruption, through the annual and post-expenditure audit system, is the Audit Service and the Office of the Auditor-General".

Prof Mills called on the Auditor-General to adhere strictly to the principles of pre-emptive measures of auditing and annual and post-expenditure audit mechanism to uncover corruption.

Prof Mills accused the AG of lagging behind schedule in the submission of the mandatory Annual Audit Reports on the Public Accounts of Ghana as well as all other audits conducted by the Audit Services to Parliament.

He said: "If the Auditor-General had concentrated on his normal functions, instead of shifting emphasis to the persecution of former NDC appointees, perhaps the audited accounts could have been brought up to date and submitted to Parliament as required.

"As the situation stands now, it is difficult to draw comparisons between the NPP and the NDC eras, during which latter era the then NPP in opposition used to brandish the Auditor-General's report at press conferences and attributed malfeasances of clerks and messengers to the corruption of the NDC Government."