Barbados has been ranked the Caribbean’s least corrupt country by Transparency International.
And the ranking, which was released yesterday by the Berlin, German-based group, also revealed that the island had the lowest level of perceived corruption among the world’s developing countries.
Transparency International’s annual Global Corruption Perceptions Index ranked countries in order of those with the least perceived corruption in the public sector to those with the most.
The countries perceived to have the least corrupt public sectors in the world were Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, which all scored 90.
Barbados, ranked at 15th with a score of 76, was perceived as less corrupt than many developed countries including Belgium, Japan, Britain and the United States.
Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica ranked at 80th and 83rd with scores of 39 and 39, respectively. The lowest rankings among Caribbean countries were Guyana at 133rd with a score of 28 and Haiti at 165th with a score of 19.
Ranked 174th, Somalia, North Korea and Afghanistan were perceived as having the most corrupt public sectors in the world, with a score of eight – the same as last year.
African countries made up 13 of the bottom 30 countries in the world.
The landlocked country of Botswana was ranked 30th with a score of 65, and was perceived to have the least corrupt public sector on the African continent.
“Two thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (highly clean), showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable,” Transparency International said in a statement on its web site.
Below is a list of the top 20 countries in order of ranking (best to worst), followed by the score. (GE)
