Is corporate governance in Singapore on a downward trajectory?

ON Dec 5, the Asian Corporate Governance Association (ACGA) released the 2018 edition of CG Watch which covers 12 Asian markets. The report includes a "top-down" market survey undertaken by ACGA and a "bottom-up" environmental, social and governance (ESG) survey of companies by CLSA.

This survey now uses seven categories that are broadly based on the different stakeholders in the corporate governance ecosystem. They are "Government and public governance", "Regulators", "CG rules", "Listed companies", "Investors", "Auditors and audit regulators" and "Civil Society and media". The "Regulators" category is further divided into "Funding, capacity building, regulatory reform" and "Enforcement". These seven categories replace the five "thematic" categories of CG rules and practices, enforcement, political and regulatory environment, accounting and auditing, and CG culture, that have been used since the first survey in 2003.

Other than the changes in the categories, there are also changes in the number of questions used and scoring rubric compared to 2016. This means that the 2018 scores are not comparable to the 2016 scores.