Country profile - BGR

Corruption in Bulgaria

6 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 62.6 (2022).

Grand: 32 Petty: 82.7 Latest observed: 2022

Bulgaria: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Bulgaria is Severozapaden (57.4/100), and the least corrupt is Severen tsentralen (67.1/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 6 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Bulgaria's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 62.6/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Severozapaden (SCI 57.4/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Severen tsentralen (SCI 67.1/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 32/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 82.7/100 (last directly observed in 2022).
  • Trend: Bulgaria's SCI moved from 63.6/100 (1995) to 62.6/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 6 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Bulgaria compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Bulgaria into 6 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 62.6 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 43 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.2 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 6 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

67 53 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (6)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Severozapaden BGRr101 1995-2022 57.4
2 Yugozapaden BGRr105 1995-2022 60.1
3 Yuzhen tsentralen BGRr106 1995-2022 63.4
4 Severoiztochen BGRr103 1995-2022 63.9
5 Yugoiztochen BGRr104 1995-2022 63.9
6 Severen tsentralen BGRr102 1995-2022 67.1

Download Bulgaria

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download BGR.csv