Country profile - PHL

Corruption in Philippines

17 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 61.7 (2022).

Grand: 44.8 Petty: 70.6 Latest observed: 2019

Philippines: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Philippines is II-Cagayan Valley (55.4/100), and the least corrupt is ARMM (70.2/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 17 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Philippines's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 61.7/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: II-Cagayan Valley (SCI 55.4/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: ARMM (SCI 70.2/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 44.8/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 70.6/100 (last directly observed in 2019).
  • Trend: Philippines's SCI moved from 61.8/100 (1995) to 61.7/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 17 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Philippines 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 Philippines into 17 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 61.7 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 33 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.5 ≈ −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 17 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

63 56 1995 2022

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

Regions (17)

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 II-Cagayan Valley PHLr104 1995-2022 55.4
2 III-Central Luzon PHLr105 1995-2022 55.4
3 IVA-CALABARZON PHLr106 1995-2022 57.7
4 XII-SOCCSKSARGEN PHLr115 1995-2022 58.3
5 National Capital Region PHLr101 1995-2022 59.5
6 I-Ilocos PHLr103 1995-2022 59.6
7 XI-Davao PHLr114 1995-2022 59.7
8 VIII-Eastern Visayas PHLr111 1995-2022 59.9
9 VII-Central Visayas PHLr110 1995-2022 60.5
10 V-Bicol PHLr108 1995-2022 61.5
11 XIII-Caraga PHLr116 1995-2022 61.7
12 VI-Western Visayas PHLr109 1995-2022 63.4
13 X-Northern Mindanao PHLr113 1995-2022 63.6
14 IX-Zamboanga Peninsula PHLr112 1995-2022 65.1
15 Cordillera Admin Region PHLr102 1995-2022 67.3
16 ARMM PHLr117 1995-2022 70.2
17 IVB-MIMAROPA PHLr107 1995-2022 70.2

Download Philippines

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 PHL.csv