India slipped two places on the Corruption Perception Index after it ranked at 80, compared to the previous year when it was ranked at 78, said Transparency International in its annual report on Thursday.
The country scored 41 out of 100, same as last year’s, indicating moderate to high-level of corruption.
Interestingly, China, Ghana, Benin and Morocco shared the same score as India on the index.
Meanwhile, Pakistan was ranked at 120 out of 180 which indicated ‘very high levels’ of corruption. The neighbouring island, Sri Lanka was ranked at 93 with a score of 38.
The corruption perception index uses a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 is considered very clean while 0 is highly corrupt. It scores 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to experts and business people.
According to the report, two-thirds of the countries scored below 50 with an average score of 43.
The report also highlighted that this year corruption was more pervasive in countries where “big money can flow freely into electoral campaigns and where governments listen only to the voices of wealthy or well-connected individuals.”
While the highest scoring regions mostly were in western Europe and European countries, the lowest-scoring countries were in the sub-Saharan Africa region, the annual report showed.
The countries which topped the list are New Zealand and Denmark, with scores of 87 each, followed by Finland (86), Singapore (85), Sweden (85) and Switzerland (85).
The bottom countries are Somalia, South Sudan and Syria with scores of 9, 12 and 13, respectively.
These countries are closely followed by Yemen (15), Venezuela (16), Sudan (16), Equatorial Guinea (16) and Afghanistan (16) and North Korea (17).
Source: Thanks WIONews.com