Sri Lanka improved six notches in the CPI and ranked at the 85th place among 175 countries with a score of 38 points. Last year with a score of 37 points the island nation in South Asia ranked at the 91st place among 177 countries.
The Corruption Perceptions Index is based on experts' opinions of public sector corruption. It ranks countries and territories on a scale of 0 - 100 based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. A '0' means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean.
More than two thirds of the 175 countries in the 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index score below 50, Denmark comes out on top again in 2014 with a score of 92 while North Korea and Somalia share last place, scoring just eight.
Out of the 28 Asia Pacific countries in the index, which account for nearly 61 percent of the world's population, the majority lag behind in their efforts in fighting corruption in the public sector, with 18 scoring less than 40 out of 100.
Sri Lanka's neighbor, India also with the same score as Sri Lanka ranked at the 85th place in the CPI. Despite the engagement, innovation and participation of vibrant civil society, media and people at large, corruption continues to be one of the country's biggest challenges, the Transparency International said.
Elsewhere in the South Asia region only Bhutan scored above 50, ranking at 30th with a score of 65 while Nepal and Pakistan placed at 126th and Bangladesh placed at 145th.
