Jordan ranks 63rd in 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index

AMMAN — Jordan ranked fourth in the Arab world and 63rd globally out of 180 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in 2023, which was issued on Tuesday by Transparency International.

The index showed that Jordan was among the first 63 countries in the world in combating corruption, ahead of 117 countries, and ranked fourth in the Arab world after the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Transparency International said that most world countries made little progress in addressing corruption in the public sector, as the global average of the index remains unchanged at 43 points for the 12th year in a row, with two-thirds of countries scoring less than 50.

According to the Rule of Law Index, the world saw a decline in the performance of justice systems, and the countries that obtained the lowest scores on the Rule of Law Index recorded very low scores on the CPI, which shows a clear relationship between access to justice and corruption.

For the sixth year in a row, Denmark topped the list on the index, with a score of 90, followed by Finland and New Zealand with scores of 87 and 85, respectively.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).

Since 2018, 12 countries have significantly dropped their scores on the CPI, and the list includes low- and middle-income countries, while the performance of eight countries has improved.

Transparency International called for granting justice systems the independence, resources, and transparency necessary to effectively punish all perpetrators of corruption crimes, imposing checks and balances, and developing better procedures and laws to help justice institutions protect themselves from acts of corruption.

Since its inception in 1995, the CPI has become the leading global public sector corruption index as it records the results of 180 countries around the world according to perceptions of corruption in the public sector, using data from 13 external sources, including the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and private consultancy and risk calculations firms, and research centres.

The index scores represent the opinions of experts and business people, not the public.

The CPI calculation process is regularly reviewed to ensure it is as robust and consistent as possible, and the most recent review was conducted by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in 2017.