JAMAICA HAS broken the trend of increasing corruption, according to the annual survey of global corruption released this week by Transparency International.
The country scored 3.6 on a scale of one to 10, with the least corrupt country, Iceland, scoring 9.7. Jamaica's score may not appear impressive, but it was better than the 3.3 scored last year, which had continued a decline from the 3.8 in 2003 and four in 2002.
Transparency International's index is compiled from a series of polls on perceptions of corruption made by independent organisations. The organisation measures the perception levels, which they say is a good mirror of actual corruption which is impossible to measure.
More than two-thirds of the 159 nations surveyed in Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scored less than five out of a clean score of 10, indicating serious levels of corruption in a majority of the countries surveyed, the survey stated.
CARIBBEAN RANKINGS
Jamaica was ranked 64 of the 159 countries.
The country with the lowest score was Chad with 1.7 in the CPI. Haiti was marginally better at 1.8, while Guyana scored 2.5.
At the top of the Caribbean rankings was Barbados with 6.9, a decline from the 7.3 scored the year before. Trinidad also saw increasing corruption, scoring 3.8, against 4.2 before. Belize had a slight decline to 3.7 from the 3.8 in 2003.
The United States improved its score to 7.6 from 7.5 the year before while the United Kingdom held steady at 8.6
"Corruption isn't a natural disaster: It is the cold, calculated theft of opportunity from the men, women and children who are least able to protect themselves," said David Nussbaum, TI's chief executive in a statement. "Leaders must go beyond lip service and make good on their promises to provide the commitment and resources to improve governance, transparency and accountability."
And wealth is not a prerequisite for successful control of corruption. New long-term analysis of the CPI carried out by Prof. Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff shows that the perception of corruption has decreased significantly in lower-income countries such as Estonia, Colombia and Bulgaria over the past decade.
In the case of higher-income countries such as Canada and Ireland, however, there has been a marked increase in the perception of corruption over the past ten years, showing that even wealthy, high-scoring countries must work to maintain a climate of integrity.
