Tajikistan has dropped fifteen places in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
Tajikistan with scores of 25 ranked 151st among 176 countries.
In the previous Corruption Perceptions Index, Tajikistan ranked joint 136th out 165 countries — the same as Nigeria and 17 position below Russia.
In 2016, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan ranked 154th and 156th respectively.
Denmark and New Zealand performed best in 2016, with scores of 90, followed closely by Finland (89) and Sweden (88).
Somalia remained the worst performer with a score of 10, followed by South Sudan (11) and North Korea (12).
The report showed pervasive public-sector corruption around the world. Sixty-nine per cent of 176 countries scored below 50 on the index scale of 0 to 100, with 0 perceived to be highly corrupt and 100 considered “very clean”. More countries declined in the index than improved in 2016, Transparency International noted.
Transparency International (TI) has published the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) since 1995, annually ranking countries “by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.” The CPI generally defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit.”
Recall, Tajikistan signed up to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in 2006 and an anticorruption strategy for 2013-2020 was adopted in 2012.
Meanwhile, Transparency International’s report, The Global Corruption Barometer 2016, says that nearly a third of public service users in the CIS nations reportedly paid a bribe (30 per cent) in the past year and bribery is highest in Tajikistan where this rises to 50 per cent of service users.
