Corruption No.4

India is among the fourth most corrupt countries in Asia but graft in China poses the biggest global threat because of the country's growing economic influence, a consulting firm said on Tuesday in a study.

Other countries which came in at the bottom of the annual graft rankings by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd included Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

Singapore was the least corrupt, followed by Japan and Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, the firm said.

The report said Indonesia was Asia's most corrupt nation, ranking 9.25 on a scale from zero to 10. "The issue of corruption could make or break Indonesia," the report said

The firm said that the Philippines which ranked No. 2 on the graft list with a score of 8.9 needed to beef up its anti-corruption forces. There's a backlog of 2,000 cases in the country's anti-graft court, the report said.

Vietnam was No. 3 on the list because corruption is rampant in powerful state-controlled companies and government ministries, the report said.

India was fourth on the list, partly because the country's "suffocating bureaucracy" created plenty of opportunities for payoffs to cut through red tape, the report claimed.