Despite maintaining its score from last year, Taiwan slipped five places in this year’s Transparency International corruption index.
According to the group’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index released yesterday, Taiwan ranked 39th on a list of 180 countries, with a score of 5.7 on a 10-point index in which a score of 10 denotes “least corrupt.” Taiwan ranked 34th last year.
South Korea received a score of 5.6 and ranked 40th.
Hung Yung-tai (洪永泰), chairman of Transparency International-Taiwan (TI-Taiwan), said at a press conference in Taipei yesterday that South Korea had been making progress on the index since 1999.
On this year’s index, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, Singapore, Finland and Switzerland were the least corrupt states. All received a score of more than 9.0.
As for other Asian countries and territories, China scored 3.6 and ranked 72nd, while Hong Kong scored 8.1 (12th) and Japan scored 7.3 (18th).
Somalia came last with a score of 1.0. Just above that battle-scarred country were fellow war zones Iraq and Afghanistan.
Canada and Australia ranked 9th with a score of 8.7. The US ranked 18th with a score of 7.3 and the UK ranked 16th with a score of 7.7.
The study is based on surveys conducted by 13 non-governmental organizations and the work of more than 20,000 participants from more than 200 countries.
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