Bridgetown.
Barbados is among the least corrupt countries in the world according to the latest figures released by the German-based Transparency International (TI) on Tuesday.
According to TI, Barbados heads the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries on the Corruption Perception Index that ranks countries based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.
Transparency International has ranked Barbados 15th out of 173 countries with a score of 75, down one place from the 2012 figure of 76.
The Bahamas and St. Lucia are ranked 22nd, the second best for regional countries with a score of 71, the same as in 2012.
While Transparency International did not provide figures for St. Kitts-Nevis, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda and Belize, it said that St. Vincent and the Grenadines had a score of 62, the same as in 2012 with a ranking of 33.
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago both had a ranking of 38, but while Kingstown score remained at 38 as it had been in 2012, Port of Spain slipped one point down.
Dominica placed 41st on the rankings with a score of 58, the same as in 2012, followed by Suriname (94) with a score of 36, one less than the previous year, , Guyana (136) with a drop of one from the 2012 figure of 28, while Haiti rounded up the CARICOM countries with the same score of 2012 to place 163rd.
Transparency International said that a country’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 – 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean. A country's rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories included in the index. This year's index includes 177 countries and territories.
Denmark, as it did last year, topped the ranking with a score of 91, up from the score of 90, while North Korea, Somalia and Afghanistan were in the cellar position with a score of eight, the same as they had in 2012.
Transparency said that the world urgently needs a renewed effort to crack down on money laundering, clean up political finance, pursue the return of stolen assets and build more transparent public institutions.
