Transparency International (TI) released its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on 17 November, and Georgia’s score rose slightly to 4.1, compared to 3.9 in 2008, which marks a minor improvement. The CPI uses a scale where "0" equals highly corrupt and "10" denotes not at all corrupt. New Zealand, for instance, came in first with a score of 9.4, whereas Somalia came in last with a score of 1.1.

The methodology behind the CPI reportedly includes a combination of surveys and assessments from over the last two years of both resident and non-resident experts and business leaders from ten different independent institutions. For a country to be included in the index, at least three different sources must be available, and, according to the index, seven surveys were used for Georgia.

According to TI, the CPI is meant to be a "snapshot," not an indicator of progress over time, to gauge perceptions of corruption in the public and political sectors. A degree of caution should therefore be used when interpreting the CPI results, as they do not necessarily reflect the views of the wider public but the expert opinions of a small group (a third party) of public sector analysts.

The scores, however, are inevitably used to compare countries, and individual scores from the prior year are always mentioned in the media, i.e whether they have risen or dropped.

On a regional level, Georgia’s scores are rather positive. Armenia scored 2.7 and came in 120th place, which was a slightly negative decrease from last year (2.9). Azerbaijan received a score of 2.3 (143rd place), a fair improvement from its mark of 1.9 in 2008.

Overall, Georgia’s ranking places it 66th out of 180 countries. Interestingly, that score puts Georgia above EU Member States Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania, all of which scored 3.8 (tied for 71st place). Moreover, Georgia’s score ties that of EU candidate Croatia and is above FYR Macedonia (3.8, 71st place), another EU candidate. Georgia also scored better than Montenegro (3.9, 69th place), Serbia (3.5, 83rd), Moldova (3.3, 89th), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (3.0, 99th). (Note that though the confidence intervals overlap substantially in the index, Georgia’s point estimate was still higher than in these other countries.)

For the 2009 CPI results and the methodological brief, go here.

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For further information: CRRC