Ghana has dropped its lowest in corruption rating for the past four years, according to the latest Corruption Perception Index.
Sponsored by the Transparency International, the index indicates that Ghana has scored 43 points in its 2016 rating which was released Wednesday, 25 January 2017. With the rating, the country has had the worst performance in corruption since 2012.
According to the report, “Ghana scored 43 points out of a possible clean score of 100 and ranked the country 70 out of 176 countries included in this year’s index. The CPI 2016 used nine (9) out of the (13) data sources of independent institutions with a high level of credibility to compute the index for Ghana.”
In comparison to previous years, Ghana has had the best outing in 2014 when it scored 48 points. In 2012 ghana scored 45 points, 46 in 2013 and 47 in 2015.
It has however performed better than most other African countries including Somalia which is the most corrupt, followed by South Sudan. It has also performed better than countries like Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Morocco, Côte d´Ivoire, Egypt, Nigeria, and Guinea.
According to the Corruption Perception Index, Botswana has once again emerged the least corrupt country in Africa with a score of 60, ranking 35 globally. It is closely followed by Cape Verde with a score of 59 and ranking 38 globally. Third and fourth positions were occupied by Mauritius and Rwanda with both scoring 54 and ranked 50 globally.
The West African country has, however, performed better than very big economies of the world including China and Russia. It has also performed better than countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Iraq.
On the global stage, Denmark and New Zealand have been rated as the best with scores of 90. They are closely followed by Finland (89) and Sweden (88).
While it is made clear that no country is completely free of corruption, top performers have high scores in the openness of government, press freedom, civil liberties and independent judicial systems.
Somalia has for the tenth year running, held on as the worst performer on the index, scoring only 10. South Sudan is second to bottom with a score of 11, followed by North Korea (12) and Syria (13). The worst performing countries on the index are also characterised by widespread impunity, poor governance and weak institutions.
There is a great decline in the overall performance of countries in the latest corruption ranking than others improved. Countries in troubled regions, particularly in the Middle East, have seen the most substantial drops this year.
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