Pakistan’s ranking on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2024 has dropped by 2 spots from 133 in 2023 to 135 in 2024 out of 180 countries, according to a report released by Transparency International on Tuesday.
The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
The CPI report is released annually by Transparency International Berlin. Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) has no role either in the collection of data or the calculation of the country’s score, TIP explains.
The score for Pakistan also reduced by two points from 29 in CPI 2023 to 27 in CPI 2024.
According to TIP chair retired Justice Zia Perwez, the score of all countries in the region except Oman, China, Turkiye and Mongolia declined. The downslide for the region showed that Pakistan was one of the countries holding up against the overall trend in the region.
Global corruption levels remained alarmingly high, with efforts to reduce them faltering, according to the CPI report, which exposed serious corruption levels across the globe, with more than two-thirds of countries scoring below 50 out of 100.
Countries with improvement, decline
Almost 6.8 billion people live in countries with CPI scores under 50 — equivalent to 85 per cent of the world population of 8bn.
For the seventh year in a row, Denmark obtained the highest score on the index (90) and was closely followed by Finland (88) and Singapore (84).
Countries with the lowest scores were mostly fragile and conflict-affected ones like South Sudan (8), Somalia (9), Venezuela (10), Syria (12), Libya (13), Eritrea (13), Yemen (13) and Equatorial Guinea (13).
While the CPI noted that the Middle East and North Africa’s rising average score was a “reason for optimism”, it pointed out that it was the first increase in over a decade and only by one point — to 39 out of 100.
Rankings of countries on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI 2024 report
Rankings of countries on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI 2024 report
Rankings of countries on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI 2024 report
Rankings of countries on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI 2024 report
Rankings of countries on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI 2024 report
According to Transparency International, the top-scoring region was Western Europe and the European Union but its score “decreased overall for the second year in a row – many leaders are serving business interests rather than the common good and laws are often poorly enforced”.
“While Asia Pacific does have a range of improving countries, its average score is decreasing, as vicious cycles of corruption and climate change impacts take their toll,” it added.
Over a quarter of the countries in the sample (47) got their lowest score yet on the index, including Austria (67), Bangladesh (23), Brazil (34), Cuba (41), France (67), Germany (75), Haiti (16), Hungary (41), Iran (23), Mexico (26), Russia (22), South Sudan (8), Switzerland (81), the United States (65) and Venezuela (10).
Over the past five years, seven countries have significantly improved their scores in the index: These include Côte d’Ivoire (45), the Dominican Republic (36), Kosovo (44), Kuwait (46), the Maldives (38), Moldova (43) and Zambia (39).
At the same time, 13 countries saw their scores significantly decline in the index over the past five years.
The significant decliners were Austria (67), Belarus (33), Belgium (69), El Salvador (30), France (67), Kyrgyzstan (25), Lebanon (22), Myanmar (16), Nicaragua (14), Russia (22), Sri Lanka (32), the United Kingdom (71), and Venezuela (10).
