Transparency International has released their yearly Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2024 report, and there’s good news and bad news: although we’ve slid down on the list, Australia is still within the least corrupt countries in the world.
In 2024’s report, Oz had come in at number 10. This past year, however, we went down two spots to twelfth place, tied with Estonia, Hong Kong, and Ireland. Ahead of us from the Asia-Pacific region are our neighbours from New Zealand at number 3 — up one spot! — and Singapore holding steady in third place.
Eight countries have improved in Asia-Pacific since 2012, but of course our region presents a lot of different challenges that vary country to country.
The Report
The CPI ranked 182 countries based on their perceived levels of public sector corruption, according to several sources in each country. Down 2 places in the global ranking from last year, with a transparency score of 76 out of 100, Australia nonetheless achieved a very good position. Zero represents high corruption and 100 indicates a very clean public sector according to the report.
As mentioned, many Asia-Pacific countries have improved in the last decade, but on average our region has dropped one point, and this is especially concerning, due to corruption’s detrimental impact on climate change, as it obstructs environmental policy, hijacks climate financing and hinders the enforcement of regulations.
In addition, Asia Pacific is home to a third of the world’s population, has the second largest number of young people, and is the region most prone to natural disasters, so the negative effects of corruption could be felt here particularly strongly.
Top 15 least corrupt countries worldwide
- Denmark (score: 89/100)
- Finland (88/100)
- Singapore (84/100)
- New Zealand (81/100)
- Norway (81/100)
- Sweden (80/100)
- Switzerland (80/100)
- Luxembourg (78/100)
- Netherlands (78/100)
- Germany (77/100)
- Iceland (77/100)
- Australia (76/100)
- Estonia (76/100)
- Hong Kong (76/100)
- Ireland (76/100)
Denmark retained its position as the least corrupt country globally for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Finland also managed to maintain its position as the second least corrupt country worldwide, followed by Singapore in third place for the second year in a row, knocking New Zealand to the fourth position.
Interestingly, the report highlighted a worrying global trend because more than two-thirds of countries scored below 50 on the index and 47 of them declined from last year. This indicates widespread corruption issues are becoming a problem, including in problems that had historically not had this issue. According to the report, the most corrupt countries in the world are South Sudan, Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen and Libya.