Sri Lanka has shown a significant improvement in its global ranking on the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which was released today by Transparency International.
The latest data reveals that Sri Lanka has advanced 14 positions in the index, which evaluates more than 180 countries and territories based on perceived levels of public sector corruption. In the 2024 CPI, Sri Lanka had attained a score of 32, placing it 121st globally. However, in the 2025 index, the score has increased to 35, elevating the country to the 107th position.
This 14-place ascent indicates a growing confidence in Sri Lanka’s recent initiatives to combat public sector corruption. The three-point rise in the CPI score reflects a change in the perception of the integrity of the country’s public sector among experts and business leaders.
The CPI utilizes a scale from 0, signifying “highly corrupt,” to 100, indicating “very clean.”
Despite this progress, Sri Lanka’s current score of 35 is still below the global average of 43, highlighting that considerable challenges in governance and accountability remain.
The CPI is a composite index derived from data across 13 external sources, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.
Over the last decade, Sri Lanka’s CPI score has shown relative stability, with the lowest score of 36 recorded in 2016 and the highest score of 40 reported in 2012.
The index evaluates various forms of public sector corruption, such as bribery, the diversion of public funds, the effectiveness of prosecuting corruption cases, the robustness of legal frameworks, access to information, and protections for whistleblowers, journalists, and investigators.
For the eighth consecutive year, Denmark leads the index with a score of 89, followed closely by Finland (88) and Singapore (84). In contrast, South Sudan and Somalia are at the bottom of the rankings, each with a score of 9.
