2 weeks ago
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The Ministry of Governance has issued a recorded statement responding to the recently released Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2025, which again placed Belize under international review regarding public sector accountability and institutional confidence. On February 12, Love News reported that Belize received a score of 36 out of 100, ranking 104th out of 182 countries. The index measures perceived levels of corruption based on the views of experts and business leaders, examining trust in public systems such as procurement transparency, management of public funds and fairness of institutions. The global average stands at 42 points, placing Belize below the worldwide benchmark but still above some developing nations. In today’s response, Director of the Governance Unit, Cesar Ross, explained that this marks the first time since 2008 that Belize has been included in the index’s dataset, making the assessment particularly significant. He noted that the report should not be viewed solely as criticism but as an independent international perception of the country’s governance framework. Ross says the government intends to use the findings as a guide for reform and institutional strengthening moving forward.
Cesar Ross, Director, Good Governance Unit: “The importance of the CPI, apart from doing a comparative with the rest of the countries in the world, is that it gives us sort of an external diagnostics of how the rest of the world perceives the level of corruption, the level of good governance in the country of Belize. And so it helps guide what we need to do next, what are the things that we have been doing right, we need to do next to ameliorate or to a large extent to get rid of corruption. Well we had in 2008 been at 29% and were ranked 109 out of the 182 countries that have been ranked in the world and this year we were put at 36% average and so while there is an improvement of 7 percentage points, what we also have to take in context is the development across the world and why we have not been moving faster, one can say, why we have not been lessening or increasing our percentage of perception of good governance as such. And so there are specific indicators in the report as to what it is that they are looking for. And so what we need to do is move more fast in implementing legislations and policies but also onboarding those that we already have, like the Civil Asset Recovery and Unexplained Wealth Act, which was one of the biggest achievements of our government in in 2023 now they are saying show us how that is changing, how that is improving, how that is being measured in government as such. So when we begin to produce the measures that result of implementing these legislations is when they will be able to get more data and improve our ranking and such.”
The Ministry says the index serves as a valuable benchmark since international confidence influences investment, partnerships and development opportunities. Officials add that the government plans to review policies and transparency mechanisms with the aim of strengthening public trust and improving Belize’s future standing in the global assessment
English (US) ·