Nepal has made a slight improvement in reducing corruption but the country’s overall corruption score continues to remain poor.

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2022, an annual flagship publication of Transparency International, a global anti-corruption group based in Berlin, made public on Tuesday, Nepal has been ranked 110th among 180 countries and territories surveyed.

It is a slight improvement as the country climbed seven notches in global rankings. Nepal was ranked 117th in the index in 2021.

Nepal received 34 points in 2022, one point more than in 2021. Transparency International uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is the most corrupt and 100 is the least corrupt. A score below 50 is considered as having a relatively higher level of corruption in a country, according to the anti-corruption advocacy body.

Despite some improvement in Nepal’s score, it remains in the category of countries with rampant corruption, Transparency International Nepal said in a statement. In the last one decade, Nepal CPI score moved up to 34 in 2022 from 27 in 2012 only with the ups and down in different years between these two scores, according to the anti-corruption advocacy body.

In South Asia, Nepal has been ranked below Bhutan (25th), the Maldives (85th), India (85th) and Sri Lanka (101st).

Pakistan (140th), Bangladesh (147th) and Afghanistan (150th) are the only countries behind Nepal.

Padmini Pradhananga, president of the Transparency International Nepal, said the report showed that corruption continues to prevail in Nepal on a high scale despite a slight improvement in score by one point in 2022.

The Transparency International produces the CPI based on the surveys of six global institutions in different fields including the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, Global Insight, Bertelsmann Foundation, World Justice Project and Varieties of Democracy Project (VDEM).

Among these institutions, scores given to Nepal by the World Justice Project and Varieties of Democracy Project (VDEM) have remained consistently poor for the last few years.

The World Justice Project surveyed the status of abuse of authority by officials of the government, judiciary, parliament and security agencies for personal gains. Likewise, VDEM conducted a survey on political corruption at government, parliament and judiciary, according to the Transparency International.

Nepal received a score of 30 each from the World Justice Project and VDEM. “So the report suggests there is political corruption in Nepal and officials at top levels have been abusing their power for personal benefits,” said Pradhananga.

For example, former finance minister Janardan Sharma was in the spotlight in a number of scandals over the last one year. In early 2022, he was accused of directing the Nepal Ratsra Bank to release frozen money belonging to Prithvi Bahadur Shah, who is accused of bringing in ill-gotten funds from abroad.

In early January, Shah and his associates were arrested for receiving Rs649.5 million through the swift system. The money was reportedly earned by duping foreigners.

In June last year, Sharma faced accusations of bringing outsiders to the Ministry of Finance on the eve of the budget announcement to change tax rates to benefit certain businesses. A parliamentary committee failed to find any evidence against Janardan Sharma and exonerated him of the charges after CCTV details of that day were found to have been erased.

Likewise, in June last year, an audio clip of a district court judge and a lawyer discussing kickbacks to secure the release of a businessman accused of embezzling public money once again put the spotlight on the country’s judiciary, which has already been facing a credibility crisis.

In the audio, Kathmandu District Court Judge Raj Kumar Koirala and Rudra Pokhrel, a lawyer, are heard discussing at what price Ichchha Raj Tamang, a tainted businessman and former parliamentarian, can be released.

Earlier, the then Chief Justice Cholendra Sumsher Rana was suspended after an impeachment motion was initiated by the federal parliament on the charge of demanding share in Cabinet in July 2021.

“Incidents like impeachment motion against (former) Chief Justice, (former) Finance Minister facing accusation of altering the tax rate by involving outsiders, poor service delivery and poor implementation of development projects suggest that corruption in Nepal continues to remain rampant,” said Narayan Adhikari, co-founder of Accountability Lab, a non-governmental organisation working in the field of the governance.

“Nepal’s relative improvement in CPI ranking or score does not indicate any significant improvement in reducing corruption in Nepal. Only if the score improves significantly, we can assume certain progress has been made in controlling corruption.”

Lately, there has been a growing trend of public officials getting involved in sectors where they have conflict of interests.

Rabi Lamichhane, president of the Rastriya Swatantra Party was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister at a time when he was embroiled in citizenship and passport disputes.

The agencies under the Home Ministry are responsible for investigating those cases. He lost the post of lawmaker and Deputy Prime Minister after the Supreme Court issued a verdict invalidating his old citizenship certificate he had used to set up the new party and contest elections.

A number of other ministers have been appointed in ministries where they have conflict of interest. For example, contractor Bikram Pandey, who is also the founder of Kalika Construction, has been appointed as urban development minister.

“Nepal should introduce a law to tackle conflict of interest as per the United Nations Convention against Corruption of which Nepal is a party,” said Pradhananga. “But, the government itself is promoting conflict of interest.”

Lamichhane, who claimed to have come into politics to clean the wrongdoings of the traditional political parties and leaders, himself held the post where there was a clear conflict of interest.

“The root cause of corruption in Nepal is the lack of accountability,” said Adhikari. “We have to consider Nepal’s ranking in public accountability to assess the extent of corruption in Nepal.”