At 76th spot, India improves in world corruption index
India has climbed nine points to rank 76th in this year’s global corruption index launched here on Wednesday, topped by Denmark, with watchdog Transparency International calling graft a global “blight.
By : migrator
Update: 2016-01-27 21:59 GMT
Berlin
India has improved its past year’s position of 85 and has a grade index score of 38 out of a possible 100 which indicates the least corrupt, said the Transparency International’s International Corruption Perceptions Index 2015 report. Denmark tops the list. India shares the position with Thailand, Brazil, Tunisia, Zambia and Burkina Faso out of 168 countries. The index was prepared by using data from institutions including the World Bank, the African Development Bank.
According to Berlin-based Transparency International, 68 per cent of countries worldwide have a serious corruption problem and half of the G20 are among them. “Not one single country, anywhere in the world, is corruption-free,” the report said.
People’s watch:
The index is based on expert opinions of public sector corruption, looking at a range of factors like whether governmental leaders are held to account or go unpunished for corruption, the perceived prevalence of bribery, and whether public institutions respond to citizens’ needs.
Despite so many countries in the top 10, Transparency said there was still a lot of room for improvement in Europe and Central Asia, which it grouped as one region, saying “in low-scorers Hungary, Poland and Turkey, politicians and their cronies are increasingly hijacking state institutions to shore up power.”
“It’s even grimmer further down the index,” the organisation continued. “In Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and others, governments are restricting, if not totally stifling, civil society and free media.”
Transparency noted that in places like Guatemala, Sri Lanka and Ghana, citizen activists have “worked hard to drive out the corrupt,”it said. “2015 was also a year when people again took to the streets to protest corruption people across the world.”
Graft Order
- Brazil, in the midst of a massive corruption scandal at the state-owned oil company Petrobras, posted the biggest decline, falling 5 points to a score of 38 and ending at 76th place.
- Two-thirds of the 168 countries studied scored below 50 and the global average was 43.
- 64 countries improved their score while only 53 declined. The rest were unchanged.
- The US rose one spot this year to 16th place with a score of 76, tying with Austria. Russia sat in 119th place, tied with Azerbaijan, Guyana and Sierra Leone.
- The UK rose three spots to place 10th, tying with Germany and Luxembourg. The other top spots, from second to ninth, were occupied by Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore and Canada.
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