Bangladesh had once occupied the top spot for corruption for five years straight until 2017 when it managed to come down to the 17th position.
However, the improvement was not to last long as the country slipped once more in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for most corrupt countries, occupying the 13th place.
Bangladesh’s position has slipped six steps in the index for 2018, released on Tuesday (Jan 29).
Bangladesh is positioned at 149 among 180 countries in the latest rankings, compared to 143 a year earlier.
The CPI scores 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption.
The CPI uses a scale of 0 to 100, which means 100 is very clean and 0 is most corrupt. Bangladesh’s score in the latest CPI report is 26, down from 28 in the previous report.
Afghanistan is the only country in South Asia whose position is worse than that of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh is tied with the Central African Republic and Uganda with the CPI score of 26.
According to the Berlin-based organization, from 2001 to 2011, the scores were measured on a scale of 0 to 10. Bangladesh was on the very top from 2001 through 2005 with scores of 0.4, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5 and 1.7 respectively.
In 2006, Bangladesh scored 2 points taking the 3rd position in the index, in 2007 took the 7th position, the10th position in 2008, 13th in 2009, 12th in 2010 and 13th in 2011.
From 2012 onwards the organization started a new scoring system with a scale of 0-100.
On the new scale, Bangladesh occupied the 13th position with a score of 26 in 2012, 16th in 2013 with a score of 27, 14th in 2014 with a score of 25, 13th in 2015 with a score of 25, 15th in 2016 with a score of 26.
TI published the report after conducting surveys in 180 countries and Somalia topped the index with a 10, followed by Syria and Sudan with a score of 13. Yemen and North Korea are stood third with 14 points.
Meanwhile, Denmark became the least corrupt country according to the TI report scoring 88 points. New Zealand stands 2nd scoring 87 points followed by Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland with 85 points.
Afghanistan became the most corrupt nation in South Asia scoring 16 and Bhutan the least with 68.
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