Armenia is the 129th among the most corrupted countries.

Armenia is ranked 129th in the Corruption Perception Index 2011. Armenia has a score of 2.6 and is sharing the line with Dominican Republic, Honduras, the Philippines and Syria, said executive director of Transparency International’s Armenian office Varuzhan Oktanyan.

According to him, New Zealand tops the standings with a score of 9.5, followed by Denmark (9.4), Finland (9.4), Sweden (9.3) and Singapore (9.2). North Korea and Somalia are at the bottom of the list featuring 183 states.

The Corruption Perception Index ranks countries based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A country’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 10, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 10 means that a country is perceived as very clean.

Index lower than 3 testifies to system corruption, Oktanyan said adding that the former Soviet countries, except for Georgia and Baltic states, are characterized by high level of corruption.

He recalled that Transparency International’s reports are prepared based on analytic research and surveys conducted by other organizations. Thirteen organizations conducted 17 surveys for this year’s reports, nine of them among experts and four – among businessmen.

Four sources were used to prepare report on Armenia.