THE Philippines has slid in the global Corruption Perception Index 2017 as it ranked 111th place out of 180 countries, from the previous 101st in 2016 and was tagged as among the “worst offenders” in the Asia-Pacific Region.
The 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index clearly shows that corruption remains a global disease, the organization said.
The Philippines scored from 35 in 2016 to 34 in 2017. The last time the country scored as low was in 2012.
The organization also noted a “slow, imperfect progress” across the Asia Pacific Region, and called the Philippines, India and Maldives among “the worst regional offenders” in terms of threatening—or in some cases, murdering—journalists, activists, opposition leaders and staff of law enforcement or watchdog agencies.
“These countries score high for corruption and have fewer press freedoms and higher numbers of journalist deaths,” said the report, adding that in the last six years, 15 journalists working on corruption stories in these countries have been murdered, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
The index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43. “Unfortunately, compared to recent years, this poor performance is nothing new,” the report read.
This year’s Corruption Perceptions Index highlights that the majority of countries are making little or no progress in ending corruption, while further analysis shows journalists and activists in corrupt countries risking their lives every day in an effort to speak out,” it said.
New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88, respectively.
Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9, respectively.
The best-performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66. The worst-performing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa (average score 32) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (average score 34).