Epress.am News from Armenia
Armenia was ranked 129th among a list of 183 countries in this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center and launched in Yerevan today.
Though it had a different ranking last year, Armenia’s actual score remains unchanged from last year. At a score of 2.6, it shares the 129–133 spots in the CPI 2011 ranking along with the Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines and Syria.
Armenia has been included in this list continuously since 2003. In order for countries to be included in the list, there must be at least three sources available, which is why not all countries in the world are included in the list, said Transparency International Anti-Corruption Center Executive Director Varuzhan Hoktanyan.
“It’s not possible to measure corruption — based on the extent of disclosure. This refers to absolutely all countries. In our case, there’s an international obligation that Armenia also invests this activity, and we have to do everything to appear perceptible to the international community.
“The 129th place as compared to last year’s 123–126th places is the lowest ranking for Armenia since 2003. A country’s ranking in this list is very important since this is likewise taken into account, and for Armenia this is a very low indicator. In 2007–2010, a slow, monotonous decrease was observed; however, this year [Armenia] is in a relatively stable condition,” he said.
As for the spread of corruption during elections, according to Hoktanyan, “The fight against corruption for us begins with clean elections.”
“If clean elections are not held in Armenia, we will have systemic corruption, and we will observe the flourishing of different ways of using administrative resources. As a consequence of this, the state becomes a tool — for furthering the narrow economic interests of different financial groups,” he said.
Among former Soviet republics, according to CPI 2011, the most corrupt is Russia (143rd place), Belarus (143) and Ukraine (152). From Armenia’s neighboring countries, Azerbaijan ranks at 143, while Turkey and Georgia are ranked 61st and 64th places, respectively.
This year’s report noted that systemic corruption exists in nearly all former Soviet republics:
“20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, except Baltic republics (singling out Estonia with its score (6.4) being the highest not only among the former Soviet republics (FSR), but also among all former Communist countries) and Georgia in recent years, all FSRs, including Armenia, are countries with systemic corruption. It comes to prove that massive systemic economic and political changes in 1990s unfortunately were not accompanied with corresponding institutional reforms,” reads the report summary.
The CPI, released annually since 1995, looks at public sector corruption based on expert assessments and opinion surveys. The 2011 CPI ranked 183 countries and territories from 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean) based on perceived levels of public sector corruption. It used data from 17 surveys that looked at factors such as enforcement of anti-corruption laws, access to information and conflicts of interest.