Even though its rating has increased giving it the best score since 2012, Guyana is still listed in the very corrupt category in the latest Transparency International Corruption Index Report; its ranking is 108 out of 176 countries with a score of 34, the highest it has ever scored. For 2015, Guyana was ranked 119 with a score of 29 while in 2014, 2013 and 2012 it scored 30, 27 and 28 respectively.
No country gets close to a perfect score in the Corruption Perceptions Index.
In the current report, tying with Guyana at 108 are Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Côte d´Ivoire, while the only Caribbean country to fall below Guyana is Haiti.
Guyana’s 2016 ranking would reflect the first full year of governance under the APNU+AFC administration which has seen a plethora of concerns raised over opaque deals, a controversial trip by Minister of State, Joseph Harmon to China and question marks over the D’Urban Park project which has seen over $1b spent with little accountability.
The Bahamas had the best ranking in the Caribbean at 24 with a score of 66. Barbados came in at 31 with a score of 61. Suriname placed 64 with a score of 45, Jamaica placed 83rd with a score of 39 while Trinidad and Tobago placed 101st with a score of 35. Trinidad’s score in 2015 was 39. Transparency International is a non-governmental organization engaged in the fight against corruption. It is based in Berlin, Germany, and was founded in 1993.
According to the international organisation, a country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).
It explained that the lower-ranked countries in its index are plagued by “untrustworthy and badly functioning public institutions like the police and judiciary.
“Even where anti-corruption laws are on the books, in practice they’re often skirted or ignored. People frequently face situations of bribery and extortion, rely on basic services that have been undermined by the misappropriation of funds, and confront official indifference when seeking redress from authorities that are on the take.”
On the other hand, higher-ranked countries tend to have higher degrees of press freedom, access to information about public expenditure, stronger standards of integrity for public officials, and independent judicial systems. However, these countries cannot afford to be complacent either since while the most obvious forms of corruption may not scar citizens’ daily lives in the higher-ranked countries, they are not immune to closed-door deals, conflicts of interest, illicit finance, and patchy law enforcement that can distort public policy and exacerbate corruption at home and abroad.
It was pointed out that over two-thirds of the 176 countries and territories in this year’s index fall below the midpoint of CPI’s scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). “The global average score is a paltry 43, indicating endemic corruption in a country’s public sector,” the report said while adding that top-scoring countries are far outnumbered by countries where citizens face the tangible impact of corruption on a daily basis.
The 2016 results, the report said, highlights the connection between corruption and inequality, which feed off each other to create a vicious circle between corruption, unequal distribution of power in society, and unequal distribution of wealth.
