Deputy Minister for Information Pius Enam Hadzide says over 60 percent of Ghanaians agree that corruption has reduced in Ghana despite the latest Corruption Perception Index scores released by Transparency International (TI).
Ghana dropped in the scores from 45 to 40 between 2012 and 2017 but began to score an improvement in 2018 albeit marginal.
The Index put together by Transparency International ranks countries annually by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.
Ghana scored 41 out of a possible clean score of 100 in the CPI 2019 and ranked 80 out of 180 countries/territories included in this year’s index. This year’s score of 41 shows that Ghana’s score remained the same compared to its CPI 2018 score (41).
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This many have labelled as not good and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) released a statement in which they said that these ratings indicate that President Akufo-Addo has proven to be the biggest enabler and promoter of corruption since his assumption of office.
However, Mr Hadzide says CPI scores are just based on perception but the real empirical data shows that the government has done well with the fight against corruption and have been commended by the public.
"The CPI report is feedback to government, the EIU also released feedback which shows we are on track and will win the next elections. What we must understand is CPI deals with the perceptive phenomenon of corruption, we have the real or empirical phenomenon of corruption too. Transparency International has been criticised over the years and have accepted that after the CPI they will also be providing the empirical one.
"The empirical data shows that 60 percent of Ghanaians believe that corruption has reduced under Akufo-Addo's government. Sometime ago getting a passport and a driving license was tough because people demanded money from you, but now we have paperless systems and that shows you are experiencing an improvement in corruption," he spoke on Asempa FM's Ekosii-Sen
This year’s score of 41 shows that Ghana’s score remained the same compared to its CPI 2018 score (41).
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The following are Ghana’s CPI scores from 2012 when the scores became comparable: Year 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 CPI score 45 46 48 47 43 40 41 41.
Ghana’s Performance Vis-a-vis other Sub-Saharan African Countries Ghana performed better than 37 other Sub-Saharan African countries including Burkina Faso 40, Lesotho 40, Ethiopia 37, Gambia 37, Tanzania 37, and performed below 9 others.