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Transparency International Report 2019: Pakistan Degraded On Corruption Ranking

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan was on Thursday ranked 120 out of 180 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2019 as Transparency International (TI) an international non-governmental organization based in Berlin issued its report today.

According to a report released by Transparency International, CPI uses a scale of 0 to 100 to rank nations, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. The score of Pakistan – 32/100 – was well below the CPI average of 43 for the year 2019. However, TI said that more than two thirds of the countries on the list scored below 50 on the index this year.

The Berlin-based non-profit releases the index every year, ranking 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people. Pakistan was ranked at the 117th place for the years 2017 and 2018.

The country scored 32/100 on the CPI in 2018 and 32/100 in 2017. Although the score of Pakistan on the index has not changed at all compared to the past year, the changes in the CPI score of other countries on the list resulted in Pakistan falling down the ranking.

“Similar to previous years, the data shows that despite some progress, a majority of countries are still failing to tackle public sector corruption effectively,” the non-profit contends in the report, adding that in the last eight years, only 22 countries significantly improved their CPI scores.

Pakistan was ranked 130 on the CPI this year, joint with African nation Niger, but above regional partners like Afghanistan (173), Iran (146) and Bangladesh (146). Neighbor and arch-rival India was ranked at the 80th place, scoring 41/100 on the CPI, according to TI.

The top countries on the index were New Zealand and Denmark, with scores of 87 each, followed by Finland (86), Singapore (85), Sweden (85) and Switzerland (85).

On the other-hand the bottom (the most corrupt) countries were Somalia, South Sudan and Syria with scores of 9, 12 and 13, respectively.

In the index, Pakistan was placed in the Asia-Pacific region, that had an average CPI score of 45 after many consecutive years of an average score of 44, illustrating general stagnation across the region. The region is home to both top-performing and bottom-listed countries on the CPI.