News article
Sleaze watchdog Transparency International reported that Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan and Myanmar were perceived as the most corrupt countries in the world, while Iceland was the cleanest.
Transparency International said in its annual report that serious levels of corruption existed in two thirds of the 159 countries surveyed, and that there was a clear link between poverty and corruption.
Half of the countries that landed at the bottom 10 on the list were African countries, while those which came in at the top were industrialized Asian and Western countries, according to Berlin-based Transparency International.
The nations perceived as the most corrupt also rank among the world's poorest, which shows how corruption and poverty feed off each other, according to the organization's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
"Corruption is a major cause of poverty as well as a barrier to overcoming it," locking poor countries in "a cycle of misery," said Transparency International Chairman Peter Eigen.
"Corruption must be vigorously addressed if aid is to make a real difference in freeing people from poverty," he said.
Despite progress on many fronts, including the imminent entry into force of the
United Nations Convention against Corruption, 70 countries scored less than three on the CPI, indicating a severe corruption problem, the report said.
The CPI index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people and country analysts and ranges between 10, which is highly clean and zero, which is highly corrupt.
For example, the United States was ranked 17th with a score of 7.6.
Iceland topped the list with a score of 9.7, followed by Finland (9.6), New Zealand (9.6), Denmark (9.5), Singapore (9.4), Sweden (9.2), Switzerland (9.1) Norway (8.9), Australia (8.8) and Austria (8.7)
Bottom of the list was Chad (1.7) followed by Bangladesh (1.7), Turkmenistan (1.8), Myanmar (1.8), Haiti (1.8), Nigeria (1.9), Equatorial Guinea (1.9), Ivory Coast (1.9), Angola (2.0) and Tajikistan (2.1).
Other African countries like Sudan, Somalia, Kenya,
Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia were in the bottom 20, as were Pakistan, Indonesia, and
Iraq.
Several Arab countries and
Israel ranked near the top of the list, with Israel and Oman listed at 28 with a score of 6.3 points. The United Arab Emirates was 30 at 6.2 and Qatar was was 32 at 5.9.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Syria ranked 70 at 3.4.
The rankings included shifts in performance over the last year.
An increase in perceived corruption from 2004 to 2005 can be measured in countries such as Costa Rica, Gabon, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay, it said.
With a score of 3.2, Sri Lanka ranked number 82 on the list.
And while Canada (8.4) and Ireland (7.4) ranked in the top 20 cleanest countries, the report warned that they were perceived as increasingly corrupt over the last decade.
On the other hand, a number of countries and territories show a decline in perceptions of corruption over the past year, including Estonia, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Qatar, Taiwan and Turkey, it said.
Hong Kong ranked 15 at 8.3, Japan was 21 at 7.3, France was 18 at 7.5, Taiwan and Qatar were both ranked 32 at 5.9, Jordan was 37 at 5.7, and Turkey was 65 at 3.5.
Among other countries on the list, South Africa ranked 36 at 4.5, Malaysia was 39 at 5.1, Thailand was 59 at 3.8, while India was 88 at 2.9.
|