Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Macedonia's corruption index worsens

Macedonia ranks 105th in corruption watchdog Transparency International's 2006 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).

The CPI is a composite index that draws on multiple expert opinion surveys measuring perceived levels of public sector corruption in 163 countries. It scores countries on a scale of zero to 10, with zero indicating high levels of perceived corruption and 10 indicating low levels.

In the past three years, Macedonia has the same corruption perceptions index (CPI) of 2.7 and it continues to drop in TI's annual reports. In 2005, Macedonia was ranked 103rd, and a year before it was ranked 97th.

In 2006, Macedonia was 105th among 163 countries tying with Bolivia, Iran, Libya, Malawi and Uganda.

According to TI's 2006 rankings of countries in South East Europe (SEE), Macedonia is almost at the bottom of the SEE region. Albania was ranked 111th with CPI 2.6.

As regards the countries in South East Europe, Slovenia was ranked 28th, Greece 54th, Bulgaria 57th, Turkey 60th, Croatia 69th, Romania 84th, Serbia 90th and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) was ranked 93rd.

TI said that some of the world's poorest nations are also the most sleaze-ridden, undermining international development efforts. Corruption is shockingly rampant worldwide with almost three-quarters of the countries in the report scoring below five, including all low-income countries and all but two African states.

Wealthy democracies topped the list, confirming the link between anti-sleaze efforts and prosperity. Finland, Iceland and New Zealand scored a near-perfect 9,6, followed by Denmark (9,5), Singapore (9,4), Sweden (9,2) and Switzerland (9.1).

Worsening perceived levels of corruption was seen in the United States. TI noted that while industrialized nations scored high on this year's index, corruption scandals continued to rock many of them.

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