Transparency International has released this year's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) revealing that corruption levels remain at a standstill worldwide with Greece and Cyprus ranking 58 and 52 respectively out of a 180 countries, whilst countries like Turkey ranked near the bottom of the list at 96th place.
The Index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople. It relies on 13 independent data sources and uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
More than two-thirds of countries (68 per cent) score below 50 and the average global score remains static at 43. Since 2012, 25 countries significantly improved their scores, but in the same period 23 countries significantly declined.
In the last five years, several countries have fallen significantly down the Index, including Canada (-8), Nicaragua (-6), Honduras (-6) and Venezuela (-4). The most significant improvers over the same period are Armenia (+14), Angola (+10), South Korea (+8), Uzbekistan (+6), Moldova (+5) and Ethiopia (+4).
According to Transparency International, the countries with the 'cleanest' record at the top of the list are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, each with a score of 88. Norway (85), Singapore (85), Sweden (85), Switzerland (84), the Netherlands (82), Luxembourg (81) and Germany (80).
Meanwhile, South Sudan (11), Syria (13) and Somalia (13) remain at the bottom of the index along with other countries who are experiencing armed conflict or authoritarianism who earn the lowest scores, including Venezuela (14), Afghanistan (16), North Korea (16), Yemen (16), Equatorial Guinea (17), Libya (17) and Turkmenistan (19).
[Transparency International]
