President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih says the work to root out corruption is nowhere near complete as the Maldives climbs 14 points on the Corruption Perceptions Index CPI 2020 released today by Transparency International.
The organization's local arm Transparency Maldives said in a statement that compared with the 2019 index, the Maldives has climbed 14 points in score and 55 positions in country ranking.
In the CPI 2020, the Maldives is ranked at 75 out of the 180 countries ranked in the index.
Highlighting this achievement, President Solih said while work to eradicate corruption remains, it is nevertheless encouraging to see that the government's anti-corruption efforts have yielded good results.
President Solih has been using a 'zero tolerance' policy against corruption in his 2-year regime so and has been forced to deal with some major corruption allegation in his time at the office.
This includes the ventilator scam which forced his former Health Minister Abdullah Ameen to resign from his post after the parliament sought a no-confidence motion against the minister.
Last year, an audit report had highlighted significant irregularities in the procurement of ventilators.
It revealed a total of MVR 30.9 million had been in advance to Executor General Trading (Dubai) for procurement of 75 ventilators and that to date no ventilator has been delivered to the country.
In the report, the Audit Office said that it found that the party has been selected to procure ventilators without assessing its financial and technical capabilities.
