Shawdesh Desk: Bangladesh has moved one notch up to 14th position from bottom in the Transparency International’s (TI) global Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), 2019.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman unveiled the report while sharing findings of the global survey at a press conference at its Dhanmondi office on Thursday.

But its score remained unchanged at 26 out of 100 and the country was ranked as the second most corrupt in South Asia.
TI, a Berlin-based graft watchdog, listed some reasons why Bangladesh was 146th in the corruption index among 180 countries.

Denmark and New Zealand were ranked as the least corrupt countries with scores of 87. Bangladesh scored 26.

Among South Asian countries, Bhutan had a score 68, while India scored 41, Sri Lanka 38, Nepal 34, Pakistan 32, Maldives 29 and Afghanistan 16.

Somalia was ranked as the most corrupt country this year with a score of 9.

Iftekharuzzaman said there has hardly been any improvement in Bangladesh’s corruption scenario, noting that the government took many initiatives in the last 10 years but could not implement those properly.

“The country is in the same position in the corruption in terms of score as it was last year,” he said. “We’re not satisfied with Bangladesh’s performance in the index.”
CPI, which ranks 180 countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption based on findings by globally-reputable survey sources, uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.