The interim Afghanistan government has stated that its ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) was “good” despite ranking lower than Pakistan.

The country ruled by Afghan Taliban was ranked 162 out of 180 countries in 2023.

“Afghanistan is a corruption-free country, in the calculation of global transparency, Afghanistan ranks 162, which is a good position,” said the English translation of Zabihullah Mujahid, the government’s spokesperson, post on X.

The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public-sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople. It relies on 13 independent data sources and uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

The report published today by the Berlin-based corruption watchdog, shows that during 2023, the CPI score was 20 out of 100.

“The fact that Afghanistan has decreased by 4 degrees compared to last year does not mean that corruption has increased in Afghanistan, but the level of transparency of some countries may have increased,” it added.