On October 26, 1999, Transparency Internacional (TI) published the results of this year’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), a league table of countries ranked according to perceived levels of corruption among public officials and politicians. The 1999 CPI drew on 17 different polls and surveys from 10 independent institutions carried out among business people, the general public and country analysts. It is based on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 represents a corrupt-free country.

For purpose of this index, corruption in the public sector is defined by TI as the abuse of public office for private gain. The surveys used in compiling this index tend to ask questions in line with the misuse of public power for private benefits, with a focus, for example, on giving and taking of kickbacks in public procurement.

TI has recently been reviewing the impact of the CPI and ways to improve the application of surveys to raise public understanding of corruption. One result has been the inclusion of 99 countries this year, compared to 85 last year and 52 in 1997.

The tables below show a list of representative countries from Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe with their respective ranking on the CPI.

Country Rank	Americas	CPI Score	Surveys Used	Standard Deviation	Less Corruption More Corruption
5	Canada	9.2	10	0.5
18	USA	7.5	10	0.8
19	Chile	6.9	9	1.0
32	Costa Rica	5.1	7	1.5
40	Peru	4.5	6	0.8
41	Uruguay	4.4	3	0.9
45	Brazil	4.1	11	0.8
49	El Salvador	3.9	4	1.9
50	Jamaica	3.8	3	0.4
58	Mexico	3.4	9	0.5
68	Guatemala	3.2	3	2.5
70	Nicaragua	3.1	3	2.5
71	Argentina	3.0	10	0.8
72	Colombia	2.9	11	0.5
75	Venezuela	2.6	9	0.8
80	Bolivia	2.5	6	1.1
82	Ecuador	2.4	4	1.3
90	Paraguay	2.0	4	0.8
94	Honduras	1.8	3	0.5

Country Rank	Africa	CPI Score	Surveys Used	Standard Deviation	Less Corruption More Corruption
24	Botswana	6.1	4	1.7
30	Namibia	5.3	3	0.9
34	South Africa	5.0	12	0.8
35	Tunisia	5.0	3	1.9
37	Mauritius	4.9	4	0.7
46	Malawi	4.1	4	0.5
47	Morocco	4.1	4	1.7
48	Zimbabwe	4.1	9	1.4
56	Mozambique	3.5	3	2.2
57	Zambia	3.5	4	1.5
62	Senegal	3.4	3	0.8
64	Egypt	3.3	5	0.6
65	Ghana	3.3	4	1.0
75	Ivory Coast	2.6	4	1.0
89	Uganda	2.2	5	0.7
90	Kenya	2.0	4	0.5
93	Tanzania	1.9	4	1.1
98	Nigeria	1.6	5	0.8
99	Cameroon	1.5	4	0.5

Country Rank	Eastern Europe	CPI Score	Surveys Used	Standard Deviation	Less Corruption More Corruption
26	Slovenia	6.0	6	1.3
27	Estonia	5.7	7	1.2
31	Hungary	5.2	13	1.1
39	Czech Republic	4.6	12	0.8
44	Poland	4.2	12	0.8
51	Lithuania	3.8	6	0.5
53	Slovak Republic	3.7	9	1.5
58	Belarus	3.4	6	1.4
60	Latvia	3.4	7	1.3
63	Bulgaria	3.3	8	1.4
66	Macedonia	3.3	5	1.2
67	Romania	3.3	6	1.0
76	Moldova	2.6	5	0.8
77	Ukraine	2.6	10	1.4
84	Albania	2.3	5	0.3
92	Yugoslavia	2.0	6	1.1

Surveys Used - refers to the number of surveys that assessed a country's performance. Seventeen surveys were used and at least 3 surveys were required for a country to be included into the 1999 CPI.

Standard Deviation - indicates differences in the values of the sources: the greater the standard deviation, the greater the differences of perceptions of a country among the sources.

1999 CPI Score - relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as seen by business people, risk analysts and the general public, and ranges between 10 (highly cle4an) and 0 (highly corrupt).

Can data from one year be compared with that from a previous year?

This is somewhat problematic. The CPI incorporates as many reliable and up-to-date sources as possible. One of the drawbacks to this approach is that year-to-year comparisons of a country's score do not only result from a changing perception of a country's performance but also from a changing sample and methodology. Some sources are not updated and must be dropped as a result, while new, reliable sources are added. With differing respondents and slightly differing methodologies a change in a country's score cannot be attributed solely to actual changes in a country's performance.

Comparisons with the views collected in previous years can therefore be misleading. In order to reduce the number of misleading interpretations of the CPI scores, the official CPI table will not include the scores from the previous year. In practice, the sources continue to show a high degree of correlation. So, the impact of differing samples and methodologies on the outcome appears to be rather small. As the attached table shows, the surveys and polls cover the years 1997 to 1999.

Is it right to conclude that the country that has the lowest score in the CPI is the world's most corrupt country?

Absolutely not. Transparency International bends over backwards to convince journalists and others that this is a false interpretation. Why? First, there are over 200 sovereign nations in the world and the CPI can only rank 99, because we just do not have sufficient good data for all countries. Second, the CPI is based on polls, which are snapshots in time and solely reflect opinions.

BRIBERY PERCEPTION INDEX

The Transparency International Bribe Payers Index (BPI) ranks the leading exporting countries in terms of the degree to which their companies are perceived to be paying bribes abroad. The BPI is the result of a special international survey conducted for Transparency International by the Gallup International Association in 14 leading emerging market economies. It has been produced to bring to public attention the need for full implementation and enforcement of the of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. The 1999 BPI therefore provides a baseline to assess the successful implementation of the convention.

What is the basic methodology of the BPI?

The BPI is based on a survey of over 770 respondents in 14 key emerging market countries. The respondents included executives at major companies, chartered accountancies, bi-national chambers of commerce, major commercial banks and legal (commercial) practices. They were interviewed personally by trained interviewers and responded to a questionnaire inquiring about trends over the past years, reasons for the use of bribery, the response to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and other aspects of transnational corruption.

How were the 14 countries in which the BPI survey was conducted selected?

The BPI survey was conducted exclusively in leading emerging market countries, because TI decided to give priority to the impact of international corruption on developing countries and countries in transition. Since this is the "frontline" for international corruption this is where the people with the most knowledge about this issue will be located, not in the head offices of major companies.

TI’s operating hypothesis was that it wanted to conduct the survey in countries where there is a reasonable spread of international competition. If an emerging market is overwhelmingly dominated by one exporting country, then it does not provide useful comparative data. This is the reason why some emerging markets were not included in the final list of countries. TI also could not include China although it is the emerging world's first target for foreign direct investment. This is primarily due to the difficulties involved in commissioning a survey on this topic in China.

The BPI poll respondents were in the following emerging market countries:

Together, these countries account for more than 60 per cent of all foreign direct investment into the developing world. 1999 Transparency International Bribe Payers Index (BPI) Ranking 19 Leading Exporters

Rank	Country	Score	Less Bribery More Bribery
1	Sweden	8.3
2	Australia Canada	8.1
4	AUSTRIA	7.8
5	Switzerland	7.7
6	Netherlands	7.4
7	United Kingdom	7.2
8	Belgium	6.8
9	Germany / United Sates	6.2
11	Singapore	5.7
12	Spain	5.3
13	France	5.2
14	Japan	5.1
15	Malaysia	3.9
16	Italy	3.7
17	Taiwan	3.5
18	South Korea	3.4
19	China (including Hong Kong)	3.1