Country profile - PAN

Corruption in Panama

5 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 56.1 (2022).

Grand: 26.6 Petty: - Latest observed: 2018

Panama: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Panama is Metropolitan Area (52.3/100), and the least corrupt is Western Panama (61.1/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 5 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Panama's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 56.1/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Metropolitan Area (SCI 52.3/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Western Panama (SCI 61.1/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 26.6/100; petty corruption (SPCI): /100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Panama's SCI moved from 64.4/100 (1995) to 56.1/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 5 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Panama 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 Panama into 5 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 56.1 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 36 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.6 ≈ −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 55 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 Metropolitan Area PANr108 1995-2022 52.3
2 Northern Panama PANr204 1995-2022 54.5
3 Eastern Panama PANr203 1995-2022 55.6
4 Central Panama PANr202 1995-2022 58
5 Western Panama PANr201 1995-2022 61.1

Download Panama

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 PAN.csv