Corruption Perception Index: Ghana scores average mark

Ghana has scored an average mark of 43 in the 2020 corruption perception index released by Transparency International.

Based on this score Ghana is ranked 75 out of 180 countries and 10^th on the Sub-Saharan African rank by Transparency International.

The CPI scores 180 countries and territories using 13 data sources which contain the assessment of business executives and experts by their perceived levels of public sector corruption.

Based on its assessment, the CPI uses a scale of 0-100 to score countries on their performance on corruption. The lower the score, the highly corrupt the country is and the higher the score, the cleaner the country is in corruption. “100 is very clean and 0 is highly corrupt”.

The survey revealed that more than two-thirds of the countries score below 50/100 and the average score is 43/100.

On the global scale, the top 6 clean countries are Denmark, New Zealand, Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland with the first two countries scoring 88 each and the other four scorings 85 each.

The bottom five countries are Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and South Sudan with scores of 15, 15, 14, 12 and 12 respectively.

The highest-scoring region is Western Europe & European Union with 66/100 whiles Sub-Sahara Africa is the lowest scoring region with 32/100 since 2018.

According to CPI, countries that are performing well invest more in health care and are less likely to undermine democratic norms and institutions.

CPI indicates that “corruption undermines an equitable response to COVID-19, highlighting the importance of transparency and anti-corruption measures in emergency situations”.

At Sub-Sahara Africa, Seychelles, Botswana and Cape Verde and three top clean countries with 66, 60 and 58 scores respectively and the bottom four countries are Equatorial Guinea with 16/100, Sudan with 16, Somalia and South Sudan with 12 each.