Uzbekistan climbs 14 places to rank 126th out of 180 countries in the 2022 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) and was named one of the best improvers in the fight against corruption over the past 5-10 years, Transparency International said in a report on Tuesday.
Among the countries of Central Asia, only Kazakhstan is higher in the ranking.
The CPI, which measures how corrupt a country's public sector is perceived to be by its experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of zero to 100 where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
The 2021 edition of the CPI ranked 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, drawing on 13 expert assessments and surveys of business executives.
In its report, Transparency International found countries that violate civil liberties consistently score lower on the CPI. Complacency in fighting corruption exacerbates human rights abuses and undermines democracy, setting off a vicious spiral. As these rights and freedoms erode and democracy declines, authoritarianism takes its place, contributing to even higher levels of corruption.
According to Transparency International, the top-performing countries were Denmark (90), Finland (88) and New Zealand (88)..
In contrast, the worst-performing countries were South Sudan with a corruption perceptions score of 13, followed by Syria (13), Somalia (12).
