Country profile - COL

Corruption in Colombia

5 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 52 (2022).

Grand: 28.6 Petty: 71.1 Latest observed: 2018

Colombia: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Colombia is Bogota (49.5/100), and the least corrupt is Andina (54.8/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 5 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Colombia's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 52/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Bogota (SCI 49.5/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Andina (SCI 54.8/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 28.6/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 71.1/100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Colombia's SCI moved from 60/100 (1995) to 52/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 5 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Colombia 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 Colombia into 5 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 52 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 39 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.4 ≈ −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 5 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

66 51 1995 2022

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

Regions (5)

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 Bogota COLr303 1995-2022 49.5
2 Orinoquia - Amazonia COLr304 1995-2022 49.6
3 Pacifica COLr305 1995-2022 51.3
4 Atlantica COLr302 1995-2022 53.9
5 Andina COLr301 1995-2022 54.8

Download Colombia

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 COL.csv