Ghana has made marginal gains in the fight against corruption.
In the 2020 Transparency International’s global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released yesterday, Ghana scored 43 points out of a possible clean score of 100 and ranked 75 out of 180 countries worldwide.
A statement released by the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the local chapter of Transparency International, said, “This CPI score indicates that Ghana gained two points compared to its 2019 score of 41.”
It added that “Ghana’s score also exceeds the sub-Saharan African (SSA) average score of 32 and is equal to the global average score of 43.”
The Transparency International 2020 CPI scores and ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption.
The CPI draws upon 13 data sources which capture the assessment of experts and business executives on a number of corrupt behaviours in the public sector.
It uses a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
Global Highlights
In the 2020 CPI, Denmark and New Zealand topped with 88 points each. Syria, Somalia and South Sudan are at the bottom with 14, 12 and 12 points respectively.
The highest scoring region is Western Europe and the European Union with an average score of 66, while the lowest scoring region is sub-Saharan Africa with an average score of 32.
Significant changes
Since 2012, the earliest point of comparison in the current CPI methodology, 26 countries have significantly improved their CPI scores, including Ecuador (39), Greece (50), Guyana (41), Myanmar (28) and South Korea (61).
Twenty-two countries significantly decreased their scores, including Bosnia & Herzegovina (35), Guatemala (25), Lebanon (25), Malawi (30), Malta (53) and Poland (56).
Nearly half of the countries have been stagnant on the index for almost a decade, indicating stalled government efforts to tackle the root causes of corruption. More than two-thirds of the countries scored below 50.
Ghana’s performance vis-a-vis other sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries
Ghana’s score of 43 placed her 10th in SSA, GII said in its statement.
According to the statement, “Seychelles is ranked highest with 66 points, followed by Botswana with 60, Cabo Verde with 58, Rwanda with 54 and Mauritius scored 53 as the top five countries in SSA.”
“Ghana also performed better than 39 other SSA countries including Benin, Lesotho, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia,” it said.
By Melvin Tarlue