Malta has slipped three places in the index of perceived corruption in the public sector compiled by Transparency International .

The 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of 180 countries places Malta in 36th place with Botswana and Puerto Rico.

Last year’s index of the same countries placed Malta in 33rd place.

Among the countries behind Malta in this year’s survey are the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, Italy (in 55th place), Greece (57), Lithuania, Poland,Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria (72).

CPI measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. The 2008 CPI scores countries on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean).

Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden share the highest score at 9.3, followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2. Bringing up the rear is Somalia at 1.0, slightly trailing Iraq and Myanmar at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4.

Significant declines were seen this year in the scores of Bulgaria, Burundi, Maldives, Norway (14 from nine last year) and the United Kingdom (16 from 12 last year).

Similarly, statistically significant improvements over the last year can be identified in Albania, Cyprus (now 31), Georgia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, South Korea, Tonga and Turkey.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.