In 2014 Bulgaria ranks lowest in the group of EU and western European countries in the annual corruption perceptions index published on Wednesday by Transparency International.

The corruption perceptions index ranks countries according to how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be on a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 indicates highly corrupt, while 100 means very clean.

In this year's corruption perceptions index Bulgaria ranks 69^th among 175 countries worldwide, achieving a score of 43.

Compared to 2013, Bulgaria records a progress both on its score and rank, which were respectively 41 and 77 last year.

However, Bulgaria's performance is not so satisfactory when compared to other EU member states and non-EU countries.

Among the EU-28 Bulgaria shares the last place with Greece, Italy and Romania, all four occupying the 69^th position along with Brazil, Senegal and Swaziland.

Two of Bulgaria's non-EU neighbours Turkey and Macedonia fare better, ranking 64^th with a score of 45.

Looking at the least corrupt states, Denmark is the undisputed leader in this year's survey with a score of 92. Ath the opposite end are North Korea and Somalia, each with a score of 8.

Corruption continues to be a problem of a global scale, with two-thirds of the 175 countries included in the 2014 index scoring below 50.

Transparency International called on the least corrupt countries on the  index to help limit the spread of corruption in emerging economies.

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