I REFER to the commentary "Why Singapore has the cleanest government money can buy" (Jan 26), whose opening thrust is that "paying top salaries to leaders and ministers ... can make government more efficient and economies more vibrant".

This is not inherently incredible or unreasonable; the problem is that the rest of the article fails to substantiate it.

The Bloomberg editorial attempted to support the claim by first highlighting that Transparency International rankings and Worldwide Governance Indicators rate Singapore as highly non-corrupt and well-governed.

Notwithstanding that this could be cherry-picking, a check reveals that the other nations ranked around Singapore in the two reports pay their Prime Ministers and ministers a fraction of what we pay ours even after the recent pay cuts.

Using the same examples, it is clear that there is a lack of correlation, much less causation, between high salaries for ministers and corruption/good governance.

The editorial then discussed Cambodia, China and Japan and linked the low salaries of public officials in those countries to various instances of corruption - a more acute fallacy.

To justify high salaries for ministers, the editorial cited mainly examples of poor pay for low- to mid-level civil servants.

It may be true that Singapore has a reasonably corruption-free, efficient government and civil service, but the article has failed to demonstrate that money is what buys you clean government.