Sri Lanka down 12 notches on corruption index

Jan 25, 2017 (LBO) - Sri Lanka has fallen 12 places to 95th in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2016, when compared with 2015, a report released by Transparency International said. The global movement against corruption ranks countries according to the perceived level of public sector corruption. The ranking is based on a scoring system that ranges between 0 (public sector perceived as highly corrupt) to 100 (public sector perceived as very clean). Sri Lanka was ranked at 95 with a score of 35 out of 176 countries and Maldives shares the slot with the island nation. In 2015 Sri Lanka was ranked better at 83 among 168 countries. 2016 marks an alarming trend where more countries declined rather than improved in the overall performance. European nations were among the highest ranked on the Corruption Perceptions Index, occupying four out of the top five slots. Denmark and New Zealand were tied in first place as the world's cleanest countries, followed by Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. The island city-state of Singapore was the only Asian state to make the top ten of least corrupt countries. The Corruption Perceptions Index aggregates data from a number of different sources such as the business community and country experts on the level of corruption in the public sector. CPI 2016 is calculated using 13 different data sources from 12 different institutions that capture perceptions of corruption within the past two years. Globally, the data reveals that a staggering 69 percent of the 176 countries scored below 50 in the 2016 CPI, indicating high levels of perceived public sector corruption prevalent throughout the world. Somalia, South Sudan, North Korea and Syria are perceived to be the most corrupt countries in the world, according to the recently released report. Somalia has held the undesirable title as the world's most corrupt country for the past ten years, with a score of 10 on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2016. Second from the bottom is South Sudan, a relatively new country which only gained its independence from Sudan six years ago, with a score of 11. The third most corrupt country is North Korea, followed by Syria, a war-torn country which is presently seeing a massive outflow of refugees.