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Nakinskie Robinson reporting
By Nakinskie Robinson
Jamaica has managed to maintain its best score ever on the Transparency International's 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index Country Rankings for 2023.
The country ranks 69 out of 180 countries.
The CPI which classifies countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, was released earlier today.
The CPI scores on a scale out of 100, where 0 means Highly Corrupt, and 100 Very Clean.
Jamaica's 2022/2023 CPI score of 44 continues to stand since 2020.
That score was also attained in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021.
It dropped a point on the index in 2019.
A CPI score of below 50 means a country has a serious corruption problem.
Transparency International says Jamaica has been in this category for 22 years and has averaged a CPI score of only 38 of 100.
It says a poor CPI signals prevalent bribery, lack of punishment for corruption and public institutions that do not respond to citizens' needs.
Prior to 2017, Jamaica had never scored higher than 44; it's previous highest score being 41, attained in 2015.
Jamaica's lowest CPI score ever was 30, recorded in 2009.
The organisation's assessment notes that the jump in 2017 came in the same year the Andrew Holness-led Parliament passed the long-awaited anti-corruption law - the Integrity Commission Act.
But the CPI says collusion among the powerful, as well as the overwhelming dominance of the Executive over the Legislature, weakens the Parliament's oversight capacities, creating conditions ripe for abuse and corruption.
Last year, local watchdog group National Integrity Action said oversight and review committees as well as the media, proved effective in holding the executive arm to account despite the need for a greater separation of powers.
Meanwhile, the international watch dog group says the Executive's failure to close gaps in the governance framework weakens the process of pursuing corruption cases involving organised crime, and fosters impunity of high-level corrupt elites.
Nine English-speaking Caribbean countries were ranked by the group in 2023.
Barbados, The Bahamas and St. Vincent and the Grenadines are on top, with Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana at the bottom - the same order as 2022 and 2021.
Barbados' ranking improved from 29 to 24 in 2023 with a CPI score of 69 making it the least corrupt of the nine Caribbean countries for the last four years.
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