Delia Ferreira Rubio

27 January 2020
The annual index released by Transparency International showed little to no improvement in fighting corruption since last year. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) scores and ranks are based on 13 surveys and expert assessments which measure the perceived level of corruption in a country’s public sector on a scale from zero (perceived to be highly corrupted) to 100 (perceived to be very clean).   The Index only measures public sector corruption, ignoring the private sector. This has met with some criticism in certain quarters. Transparency International also publishes the Global Corruption Barometer, which ranks countries by corruption levels using direct surveys instead of perceived expert opinions. This two is criticized as having substantial bias from the influential people who are surveyed.  But recent econometric analyses have found that, while not perfect, the CPI is found to be broadly consistent with one-dimensional measures of corruption. It is not possible to measure corruption accurately.
The index shows that where the campaign donations were transparent there was less corruption. Delia Ferreira Rubio, Chair of Transparency International stated, “Governments must urgently aggress the corrupting role of big money in political party finance and the undue influence it exerts on our political systems.” It also shows that where there was wide public consultation on political decisions there was less corruption. The was more corruption where only a few individuals are involved in political decision making.
It is also noted that all the top countries have population of less than 10million. It is easier to control corruption in a small community compared to populous countries such as America, China or India.
The top 6 countries in 2019 are same as in the previous year. Denmark lost one point of score and Finland gained one point compared to the previous year. The scores of to 6 countries are:
2019  2018
New Zealand           87     87
Denmark                 87     88
Finland                    86     85
Singapore               85     85
Sweden                   85     85
Switzerland             85     85
Malaysia has moved up 10 spots to the 51st position and improved its score by 6 points from 47 to 53 in 2019, showing vast improvement in tackling corruption compared to the previous year.
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