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Transparency International’s CPI shows corruption rise in Pakistan

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Kashif Zia

1 year ago

ISLAMABAD: The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2024, released by Transparency International on Tuesday, ranked Pakistan 135 out of 180 countries in 2024, dropping by 2 spots from 2023.

According to the Transparency International report, the corruption score for Pakistan reduced by two points from 29 in 2023 to 27 in 2024, showing the increase in corruption last year.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Transparency International suggested that corruption is strongly intertwined in Pakistan due to the country’s systemic governance gaps and policy implementation barriers regarding climate change, which have left its climate finance far below the projected US$348 billion needed by 2030.

Ranking of Pakistan on Transparency International’s CPI 2024. — screengrab from CPI report

“Pakistan delayed in implementing regulations and establishing institutions under the Climate Change Act of 2017,” the corruption watchdog wrote.

According to the CPI report, global corruption levels remained alarmingly high, and the efforts to reduce them faltering exposed serious corruption levels across the globe, with more than two-thirds of countries scoring below 50 out of 100.

The report showed that 32 countries significantly reduced their corruption levels since 2012, while 148 countries have stayed stagnant or gotten worse during the same period.

“The global average of 43 has also stood still for years, while over two-thirds of countries score below 50. Billions of people live in countries where corruption destroys lives and undermines human rights,” it wrote.

Global corruption level

Almost 6.8 billion people live in countries with CPI scores under 50, the anti-corruption watchdog said, which is equivalent to 85% of the world population of 8 billion.

For the seventh year in a row, Denmark obtains the highest score on the index (90) and is closely followed by Finland (88) and Singapore (84).

Countries with the lowest scores are mostly in fragile and conflict-affected countries like South Sudan (8), Somalia (9), Venezuela (10), Syria (12), Libya (13), Eritrea (13), Yemen (13) and Equatorial Guinea (13).

Over a quarter of the countries in the sample (47) got their lowest score yet on the index, including Austria (67), Bangladesh (23), Brazil (34), Cuba (41), France (67), Germany (75), Haiti (16), Hungary (41), Iran (23), Mexico (26), Russia (22), South Sudan (8), Switzerland (81), the United States (65) and Venezuela (10).

Over the past 5 years, seven countries — Côte d’Ivoire (45), the Dominican Republic (36), Kosovo (44), Kuwait (46), the Maldives (38), Moldova (43), and Zambia (39) — have significantly improved their scores in the index.

Kashif Zia