Epress.am News from Armenia
Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center held a press conference today in which Transparency International Executive Director Varuzhan Hoktanyan presented the center’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
The CPI, released annually since 1995, looks at public sector corruption based on expert assessments and opinion surveys. The 2010 CPI ranked 178 countries and drew on 13 different polls and surveys from 10 independent institutions, according to the Transparency International website.
The 2010 CPI shows that nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 10 (perceived to have low levels of corruption), indicating a serious corruption problem.
Hoktanyan said that more and more, the number of countries with an index score below five is increasing. Only 45 countries in the world scored higher than five in the index.
In the 2010 CPI, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore tie for first place with scores of 9.3. Unstable governments, often with a legacy of conflict, continue to dominate the bottom rungs of the CPI. Afghanistan and Myanmar share second to last place with a score of 1.4 and with Somalia coming in last with a score of 1.1.
Armenia’s CPI score continued its slow decrease and in 2010 it dropped by 0.1 from 2.7 to 2.6. By its score Armenia shared the rankings of 123 to 126 together with Eritrea, Madagascar and Niger. The ranking for the other two South Caucasus countries were: Azerbaijan at 134th and Georgia at 68th.
The Transparency International ED added that the next index will be presented on International Anti-Corruption Day, Dec. 9.