Nepal has made an improvement in Global Corruption Index that the Transparency International with the country climbing nine points above in 2017 compared to 2016.

Nepal has been ranked 122th out 180 countries ranked in Corruption Perception Index (CPI)-2017 against 131th out of 176 countries ranked in CPI-2016, according to an annual ranking of the Transparency International released here in Kathmandu on Thursday.  As per the CPI-2017, the country's score also improved to 31 in 2017 from 27 the previous year.

The CPI measures the extent of corruption within a country on a scale ranging from zero to 100. Countries securing higher scores are rated as the least corrupt and those with low scorers are perceived to be the most corrupt. 

In fact, Nepal received best score since last five years with score remaining 31 in both CPI-2017 and CPI-2013.  Nepal was ranked 116th position out of 177 countries ranked in 2013.

Nepal ranked in South Asia

"This is down to the fact that Nepal has held local, provincial and federal parliamentary elections paving the way for a political system to run smoothly," said Srihari Aryal, chairman of Transparency International-Nepal (TI-N).

Despite making improvement in ranking and scoreboard, the country is still the third the most corrupt country in South Asia after the Afghanistan and Bangladesh who have been ranked 177th and 143th respectively.

Nepal's year wise ranking

According to TI, corruption in public sector, graft in businesses, misuse of public positions, poor monitoring, poor access to information for the people and political corruption are continuing to engulf to Nepal.

New Zealand has been ranked as the least corrupt country with score of 89 while Somalia ranked as the most corrupt country with score of just 9, according to the report.