Government slides on all World Bank indicators

Cyprus has slipped on all governance indicators compiled by the World Bank, particularly when it comes to the rule of law metric.

The World Bank has just published its 2020 data for the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project, which reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories over the period 1996 to 2020, for six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability; political stability and absence of violence/terrorism; government effectiveness; regulatory quality; rule of law; and control of corruption.

The scores given range from -2.5 (worst) to +2.5 (best).

For the voice and accountability index, Cyprus scored 0.91 in 2020, down from 1.05 the previous year. The 2010 score was 1.02.

For political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, the Republic registered 0.29, down from 0.56 in 2019, and 0.45 in 2010.

Regarding government effectiveness, the 2020 score given for Cyprus was 0.88, dropping from 0.99 the previous year, and from 1.53 in 2010.

For regulatory quality, Cyprus had a score of 1.00 in 2020, virtually identical to the 1.01 in the previous year, but down from 1.42 in 2010.

The rule of law score deteriorated in 2020, registering at 0.58 – down from 0.76 the previous year, and from 1.22 in 2010.

Finally, for control of corruption, Cyprus scored 0.38 in 2020, dropping from 0.63 the previous year, and from 0.98 in 2010.

According to the World Bank, “these aggregate indicators combine the views of a large number of enterprise, citizen and expert survey respondents in industrial and developing countries. They are based on over 30 individual data sources produced by a variety of survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental organisations, international organisations, and private sector firms.”