India was placed 81st among 180 countries in the latest ranking of Transparency International’s (TI) corruption index.

The Global Corruption Perception Index 2017 released by TI shows India sharing the 81st place with Ghana, Morocco and Turkey.

While China came in at 71st place, Pakistan was far behind at 117.

New Zealand has topped the index, which ranks countries on the basis of graft in public sector and press freedom. Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, and Somalia, ranked 175-180 in that order, were the worst performing nations.

Other south Asian nations with a ranking worse than India’s were Nepal (122th), Myanmar (130th), Bangladesh (143rd), the Maldives (112th) and Sri Lanka (91st). Bhutan fared the best with a ranking of 26th.

The index uses a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. India’s score in the latest ranking is 40, which was the same in last year but two places higher than in 2015 and four places higher than in 2013.

“This year, the index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43. Unfortunately, compared to recent years, this poor performance is nothing new,” said TI.

“This year, New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88 respectively. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively,” read a statement by TI.

Drawing focus on the rise in the killings of journalists in highly corrupt countries, Patricia Moreira, managing director of Transparency International, said, “No activist or reporter should have to fear for their lives when speaking out against corruption.”

“Given current crackdowns on both civil society and the media worldwide, we need to do more to protect those who speak up,” she added.

The organisation drew specific attention to Hungary’s crackdown on NGOs and deaths of 20 journalists in Brazil. The statement, however, made no mention of Turkey where hundreds of journalists have been arrested by the Erdogan regime since a failed coup against the President in 2016.

India was ranked 79th on the Global Corruption Perception Index 2016.