LAHORE: A survey carried out by the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency has shown that the quality of governance has improved by 7% in the third year of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government. The federal government received a score of 51%, according to a report on Quality of Federal Governance during 2015-16 through a comparative analysis of the performance against various parameters and sub-parameters between 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 to identify low and high performing indicators. The report was issued on Tuesday. While improvements have been recorded in all five pillars of governance including ‘rule of law’, ‘management of the economy’, ‘social indicators’, ‘service delivery’ and ‘administrative effectiveness’. Of the 25 sub-divisions of pillars of governance, above average performance was recorded in 19 parameters i.e. foreign policy management, autonomy of regulatory bodies, clean, efficient and economic public procurements, immunisation of children, disaster preparedness and management, health care, management of population growth, environment sustainability, management of inflation, management of unemployment, investment friendliness, utility bills collection, electricity production and management, development programme, collection of taxes, agricultural development, national defence, peace, stability and order, anti corruption, while below average performance was recorded in six parameters – use of technology for better governance, merit based recruitments and promotions, education, poverty alleviation, water resources development and management, transparency. According to the report, the most improvement observed in federal governance was in the management of inflation with a score of 88%. Improvements in the management of monetary policy and the global fall in oil prices resulted in a low average rate of inflation of 2.8% in 2015-2016. Second highest score was observed in peace, stability and order (73%) owing to the increase in the number of insurgents / terrorists neutralised and third highest to healthcare (68%) due to decreasing infant and maternal mortality rates. As the sub-parameter that demonstrated the highest improvement in PILDATs assessment compared to the previous year’s scorecard, investment friendliness earned a score of 67% in 2015-2016 as compared to the score of 27% in 2014-2015. The report claimed that this was due to an increase in the total amount of foreign direct investment in Pakistan rising by 38% from $922.9 million in 2014-2015 to $1,281 million in 2015-2016. Transparency has consistently been recorded as the poorest performing aspect of the federal governance. A score of 21% was assigned to transparency due to the continued absence of a progressive right to information legislation at the centre. The PILDATs analysis for 2014-2015 also assigned the lowest score to transparency. According to a statement, “The objective behind PILDAT’s initiative on assessment of the quality of governance is to highlight key areas of strengths and potential areas requiring improvement in the quality of governance.” The initiative is intended as a collaborative effort to enable the government and the public in making informed, fact-based assessment regarding governance at the centre. The PILDAT annually compiles the report after a year-long collection and analysis of data gathered from various ministries, divisions, international agencies and media. Meanwhile, the PILDAT has assessed the overall performance of the federal government across 25 parameters by calculating percentage change for over 100 governance indicators from 2014-2015 to 2015-2016. Scores were assigned on a scale of 1-5 depending on the magnitude of the percentage increase or decrease.