What We Pay Members of Parliament

I thought I should look at what politicians in selected countries earn. Below is a list of the countries and what they pay their parliamentarians annually, inclusive of other monetary allowances. To put it in perspective, I have included the ratio of annualized pay to income per capita of those countries. You probably notice something notorious about the three East African countries. In Kenya, for instance, each parliamentarian earns 143 times more than an average Kenyan annually. (According to IMF (2010), an average Kenyan makes about US$888 or Kshs.71,000 annually, not correcting for purchasing power parity, that is.) I would be curious to know whether this is representative of what goes on in other African countries.

Country	Annual Salary, in US$	Salary-GDPpc ratio
U.K	315,000	8.68
Canada	182,000	3.97
U.S	174,000	3.69
Singapore	154,238	3.62
Kenya	127,500	143.58
Germany	114,859	2.84
Australia	91,950	2.10
Uganda	87,450	173.85
France	87,300	2.15
Tanzania	69,900	128.97
South Africa	57,360	8.08