Georgia has set up a benchmark by obtaining a top rank among East European and Central Asian states in the independence of the judiciary, good governance and other metrics in the latest ranking report of the Public Integrity Index released by the European Research Center for Anti-corruption and State-building (ERCAS).
Georgia has attained the 32nd position and comes second after Estonia in the post-Soviet space. This marks a change from the previous Public Integrity Index ranking in 2019, where the nation was listed ahead of Baltic states and ranked 4th among former Soviet republics.
An increase in the rank of the Public Integrity Index has prompted the Head of the Administration of the Government, Ilia Darchiashvili, to say the nation continues to progress and lead in the international research and ratings.
The Public Integrity Index is based on the calculations on several components such as administrative burden, judicial independence, trade openness, budget transparency, e-citizenship and freedom of the process.
The six components of the IPI were selected based on years of theoretical and empirical research on the control of corruption.
The research on the Index of Public Integrity is conducted every two years by the European Anti-Corruption Center. ERCAS began publishing the research on the Public Integrity Index in 2015.
Moreover, the index draws on research and the reports of the UN, the World Economic Forum, the World Bank, other internationally recognized entities, and global valuing organizations.
The IPI aims to capture a snapshot of this balance in 114 countries for which data is available. Several indices currently show that corruption remains a key issue not only in developing countries but also in many modern societies.
However, Denmark ranked #1, Norway #2, Georgia #32, while Chad ranked (#141) last on the Public Integrity Index.
