Morocco is ranked first in North Africa by the recent Transparency International report which focuses on corruption. The Kingdom has managed to better is score in the annual report. Morocco is improving its score at the Corruption Perception Index, released Tuesday, January the 29th, by Transparency International, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Germany. The Kingdom is among the best performing nations in North Africa. Alongside Tunisia, Morocco was ranked 73rd in the region, topping the list that includes Algeria, Mauritania, Egypt and Libya. According to the index, which ranks 180 countries and territories in the world, Morocco and Tunisia are positioned first in North Africa, scoring 43 points each. Algeria and Egypt (105th in the world), are ranked second, collecting 35 points, while Mauritania (144th) is third, followed by Libya (170th) positioned fourth. In the MENA region, Morocco is positioned 6th, behind the United Arab Emirates (23rd), Qatar (33rd), Oman (53rd), Jordan (58th) and Saudi Arabia (58th). The Kingdom, on the other hand, is ranked above Kuwait (78th), Bahrain (99th) and Iraq (168th). Morocco improves its score Assessing the perceived levels of public sector corruption in several countries and territories, the index shows how Morocco managed to better its score in the past few years. Indeed, Morocco scored 36 points in 2015, 37 in 2016 and 40 in 2017 before managing to reach 43, the average score in the 2018 edition of the annual report. The latter uses a «scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean», wrote the authors of the index on Transparency International's official website. According to the Corruption Perception 2018 edition «more than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on this year's CPI, with an average score of just 43». The Transparency International chair Delia Ferreira Rubio stated explained that is due to undemocratic and populist politicians. To her, «corruption is much more likely to flourish where democratic foundations are weak and, as we have been in many countries, where undemocratic and populist politicians can use it to their advantage». For the record, the Corruption Perception ranking was topped by Denmark which scored 88 points, followed by New Zealand with 87 points and Finland, Singapore and Sweden (85).
