TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHED CORRUPTION PERCEPTION REPORT,BOSNIA RANKED 84TH IN THE WORLD

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (27.September,2007) - This year’s global Corruption Perception Index shows most Southeastern European countries have moved up in the international league table, but they remain among the more corrupt states.

The latest survey by the corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), shows Bosnia, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia climbing up in the rankings while Bulgaria has fallen back.

The Corruption Perception Index, CPI, published yesterday, shows Bosnia up from 93rd place to equal 84th, a position also occupied by Macedonia (up from 105th) and Montenegro.

In one of the first local reactions to the report, the Montenegrin Minister of the Interior Jusuf Kalamperovic stated that the results of the fight against corruption in Montenegro were limited, and there was a need to change legislation.

“We’ll do our best to make conditions for an efficient fight against corruption and organized crime”, Kalamperovic stated at a conference on key strategies for successful criminal persecution of corruption”, held in Milocer yesterday.

Although Bulgaria has moved down from 57th to 64th place out of 179, it remains the Balkan nation whose corruption perception is the best.

Croatia now shares that place, having improved its standing from 69th place in 2006.Romania is ranked 69th, up from 84th.

Albania, which comes last among the Balkan states in 105th place has climbed up from last year’s 111th.Serbia is ranked 79th (up from 90th).

Boris Divjak, the head of TI’s Bosnian chapter, stressed that despite the apparent improvements, in relative terms Bosnia continued to fall further behind the rest of the region, as several other countries had made bigger improvements.

Divjak blamed this on the “complete paralysis of government” in Bosnia.The CPI report measures perceptions of corruption of public servants and politicians worldwide, based on at least three separate surveys conducted in each country.

CPI marks are given out of 10, which stands for the least, while 1 stands for the most perceived corruption.

World leaders with the least corruption perception are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand with 9.4 points each.At the bottom of the list are Myanmar and Somalia with 1.4 points.