Hong Kong has best judicial system in Asia: Business survey

Regional financial centres Hong Kong and Singapore have the best judicial systems in Asia, while India ranked eighth in a survey of expatriate business executives.    
 
Indonesia and Vietnam have the worst judicial sysytem occupying last positions in the survey carried out by Hong Kong-based consultancy PERC.     

In the PERC survey, Hong Kong's judicial system topped the vote with a score of 1.45 on a scale that has zero representing the best performance and 10 the worst.     

Regional rival Singapore was in second place with a grade of 1.92, followed by Japan (3.50), South Korea (4.62), Taiwan (4.93) and the Philippines (6.10).     

Malaysia was in seventh place with a grade of 6.47, followed by India (6.50), Thailand (7.00) and China (7.25). Indonesia got the worst score of 8.26 after Vietnam's 8.10     

The judiciary "is one of Indonesia's weakest and most controversial institutions, and many consider the poor enforcement of laws to be the country's number one problem," said the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC).     

Some court rulings in Indonesia have been "so controversial that they have seriously hurt confidence of foreign companies," said PERC, without giving specific examples.      

The Hong Kong-based consultancy said 1,537 corporate executives working in Asia were asked to rate the judicial systems in the countries where they reside, using such variables as the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and corruption.      

Transparency, enforcement of laws, freedom from political interference and the experience and educational standards of lawyers and judges were also considered.