IN A move to arrest Singapore's slide in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and restore its leading reputation for non-corruptibility, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced a week ago that the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) will be reviewed, steps will be taken to boost the manpower of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) by more than 20 per cent and a central corruption reporting centre will be set up for complaints to be made.

In the past couple of years, the island state had been rocked by a series of prominent scandals involving senior public officials and high-level executives from well-known private enterprises. While Singapore's anti-corruption laws are some of the most aggressively enforced in the world, those laws which were enacted in 1960 also need to keep pace with international developments. It is therefore timely for the PCA to be reviewed.

While it remains to be seen which aspects of the law will be revamped, we gaze into the crystal ball and outline five key areas for potential reform: