Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Thursday, 4 December 2014 01:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka has improved its ranking on the Transparency International’s annual global Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released yesterday, scoring marginally better than last year. Sri Lanka improved six notches in the CPI and ranked 85th place among 175 countries with a score of 38 points. Last year, with a score of 37 points, the island nation in South Asia ranked 91st among 177 countries. The Corruption Perceptions Index is based on experts’ opinions of public sector corruption. It ranks countries and territories on a scale of 0 - 100 based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean. According to the Berlin-based corruption watchdog, since Sri Lanka has scored below 50, the country has not still minimised the level of corruption in the public sector and there is a great need to strengthen anti-corruption mechanisms in the island nation. More than two-thirds of the 175 countries in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index score below 50, Denmark comes out on top again in 2014 with a score of 92 while North Korea and Somalia share last place, scoring just eight. Out of the 28 Asia Pacific countries in the index, which account for nearly 61% of the world’s population, the majority lag behind in their efforts in fighting corruption in the public sector, scoring less 18 than 40 out of 100. Sri Lanka’s neighbour, India, also with the same score as Sri Lanka, ranked 85th in the CPI. Despite the engagement, innovation and participation of vibrant civil society, media and people at large, corruption continues to be one of the country’s biggest challenges, Transparency International said. Elsewhere in the South Asia region only Bhutan scored above 50, ranking 30th with a score of 65 while Nepal and Pakistan placed 126th and Bangladesh placed 145th.
