Pakistan has been ranked 140 out of 180 countries, slipping further down to 16 spots over the last year, on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2021 by Transparency International, reports The News.
Pakistan’s score dropped by three points to 28 on the global corruption index. Last year, the country’s score was 31.
“It shows that corruption has increased in Pakistan as compared to the last year,” said the anti-graft watchdog in its report.
“The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean,” the organisation said.
The top countries on the index are Denmark (88), Finland (88), and New Zealand (88), all of which also rank in the top 10% in the world on the Democracy Index civil liberties score.
However, Somalia (13), Syria (13), and South Sudan (11) remain at the bottom of the CPI. Syria is also ranked last in civil liberties.
Of the 23 countries whose CPI score significantly declined since 2012, 19 also declined on the civil liberties score.
Moreover, out of the 331 recorded cases of murdered human rights defenders in 2020, 98% occurred in countries with a CPI score below 45, read the statement.
