International corruption watchdog Transparency International reports that the Dominican Republic is a little bit better with regards to its Index of Perceived Corruption, although it still ranks below the mean for Latin America. Of the 28 countries in Latin America, the Dominican Republic is number 18 on the list of IPC. Transparency International’s report was launched to the national press by Dominican civil society group “Participacion Ciudadana”. The Dominican Republic received a score of 3.0. Below the DR’s ranking are countries such as Chad, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Bangladesh who all had scores of less than 2.0. In spite of the 3.0 scored by the DR, Transparency International says that this is a little bit better than the previous report, where the country scored 2.9. Nonetheless, during the 2001 and 2003 periods the nation scored above the 3.0 mark, and thus the recent perception is that there is slightly less corruption than the previous period. In Latin America there are countries with greater perceived corruption than the Dominican Republic, and among these are Guatemala, Paraguay, Guyana, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Argentina and Haiti. The IPC scores are on a ten-point scale. The nations with scores of 9.5 or above were Iceland, New Zealand and Denmark. The average score for all of Latin America is 3.54.
See http://ww1.transparency.org/cpi/2005/cpi2005_infocus.html