Ghana scores 43 on Corruption Perceptions Index, 10th in SSA

Ghana has scored 43 out of 100 on the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI), having gained two points compared to its scores of 41 and 40 from the previous two years.

With this new record, Ghana ranked 75 out of 180 countries and territories with a perceived level of public sector corruption captured in the 2020 index.

According to a release from Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), local chapter of TI, the CPI draws upon 13 data sources which capture the assessment of experts and business executives on a number of corrupt behaviours in the public sector.

It further said that it uses a scale of zero which represents highly corrupt to 100 which is very clean.

Globally, Denmark and New Zealand topped with 88 points each whilst Syria, Somalia and South Sudan are at the bottom with 14, 12 and 12 points respectively.

The highest-scoring region is Western Europe and the European Union with an average score of 66, while the lowest scoring region is Sub-Saharan Africa with an average score of 32.

Ghana’s performance SSA countries

Per the statement, Ghana’s score 43 score placed it 10th in sub-Saharan African country, noting that Seychelles is ranked highest country in Sub-Saharan Africa with 66 points followed by Botswana with 60, Cabo Verde with 58, Rwanda with 54 and Mauritius scored 53 as the top five countries in SSA.

“Ghana also performed better than 39 other Sub-Saharan African countries including Benin, Lesotho, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia, etc,” the statement noted.

Analysis

The index noted that persistent corruption was undermining health care systems “and contributing to democratic backsliding amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”

It indicated that the countries performing well on the index invest more in health care and are better able to provide universal health coverage “and are less likely to violate democratic norms and institutions or the rule of law.”

In Ghana, of concern was the lack of accountability in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is important to note that 80 percent of the countries that significantly have improved their CPI scores since 2012 also have the percentage of their health expenditure to GDP above 5 percent. The above correlation applies in the case of Ghana as the World Bank’s report on the average percentage of health expenditure to GDP between 2000-2018 shows that nine SSA countries that performed better than Ghana in the 2020 CPI also spend higher on health as compared to Ghana’s 3.9 percent of GDP,” it explained.

It therefore suggested that Ghana strengthens oversight institutions, enforce procurement rules to all contracts, ensure open and transparent contracting to combat wrongdoing, publish relevant data and guarantee access to information to ensure the public receives easy, accessible, timely and meaningful information including and speed up the digitisation of the economy to facilitate more efficient and transparent delivery of key services in the pandemic period.