Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/779073
9 tions had performed better than Malta in 2015. This partly explains why Malta 'improved' its position in 2016 when it faced less compe- tition. As regards its placing in the European Union ranking, Malta slipped one place from 20 to 21 this year, after being overtaken by Latvia which last year scored one point less than Malta and now scores two points more. Presently Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Roma- nia, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria are the only EU countries which are perceived to be more corrupt than Malta. Apart from Latvia, three coun- tries who used to score less than Malta in past years but which have now overtaken it are: Costa Rica, Cape Verde and Georgia – all three have made remarkable ad- vances while Malta has lost a pre- cious point. In an index survey where 41 countries register a score of be- tween 45 and 65, a drop of a point or two can make an enormous dif- ference in rankings. Malta already starts from a low position in the rankings, thus any further reduc- tions in its score are bound to be in the single digits. WEF gives Malta four points fewer Malta would have fared worse had it not been for the improved rating given by the Bertelsmann Foundation – a non-profit think tank based in Washington with "a trans-Atlantic perspective on global challenges". For the score given to Malta by the World Economic Forum EOS sharply declined from 58 last year to 54 now. Malta also lost two points in the rating given by HSI Global Insight and three points in the rating given by PRS Interna- tional. Yet Malta gained a remarkable 11 points in the Sustainable Gov- ernance Indicators of Bertelsmann Foundation, that compensated for the other losses. This time round, for the first time ever Malta was also assessed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which gave Malta a relatively low score of 54, the same score given to a large group of countries ranging from Cuba (which ranks in 61st place in the overall index) to Slovenia (which ranks in 35th place in the overall index). Malta's EIU score is also much lower than Cyprus's 72, despite the fact that the latter is just one notch above Malta in the overall index. Overall the ranking indicates a decrease in Malta's score in three of the five indexes used in compil- ing Malta's score. It is this sharper decline in these three indexes that Panamagate could have been a fac- tor. For if its score were limited to these three indexes, Malta's average score would have decreased by three points and not by one. But this does not mean that the CPI Index tallies with increased con- cern on corruption reflected in Mal- taToday's opinion polls, which have seen concern on corruption increase sharply in the past year. A survey conducted in May showed that concern on corruption has reached an all-time high of 18%, and is only second to traffic in the list of national concerns. None of the five indexes used for Malta appeared to have used popular polling. The World Economic Forum's executive opinion survey (EOS) is an annual survey of business execu- tives; the Bertelsmann Foundation's sustainable governance indicators (SGI) examine governance and policymaking in all OECD and EU member states in order to evaluate each country's need for, and abil- ity to carry out, reform; the Politi- cal Risk Services (PRS) of New York assess risk profiles; and the Global Insight country risk ratings are com- piled by 100 in-house country spe- cialists, who also draw on the expert opinions of in-country freelancers. maltatoday, SUNDAY, 29 JANUARY 2017 News corruption nosedive Malta's score by 5 CPI indicators 2015 2016 Diff World Economic Forum (EOS) 58 54 -4 IHS Global Insight 63 59 -4 PRS International 60 58 -2 Economist Intelligence Unit - 54 - Bertelsmann Foundation SGI 41 52 +11 Transparency International Average 56 55 -1