Country profile - TLS

Corruption in Timor-Leste

13 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 64.4 (2022).

Grand: 61.9 Petty: - Latest observed: 2018

Timor-Leste: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Timor-Leste is Aileu (58.2/100), and the least corrupt is Ainaro (69.2/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 13 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Timor-Leste's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 64.4/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Aileu (SCI 58.2/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Ainaro (SCI 69.2/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 61.9/100; petty corruption (SPCI): /100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Timor-Leste's SCI moved from 62.3/100 (1995) to 64.4/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 13 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Timor-Leste 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 Timor-Leste into 13 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 64.4 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 42 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.3 ≈ −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 13 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

68 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 (13)

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 Aileu TLSr101 1995-2022 58.2
2 Lautem TLSr109 1995-2022 58.2
3 Oecussi TLSr112 1995-2022 58.2
4 Baucau TLSr103 1995-2022 59.6
5 Cova Lima TLSr105 1995-2022 61.6
6 Dili TLSr106 1995-2022 61.7
7 Viqueque TLSr113 1995-2022 65.1
8 Manatuto TLSr111 1995-2022 68.9
9 Ainaro TLSr102 1995-2022 69.2
10 Bobonaro TLSr104 1995-2022 69.2
11 Ermera TLSr107 1995-2022 69.2
12 Liquica TLSr108 1995-2022 69.2
13 Manufahi TLSr110 1995-2022 69.2

Download Timor-Leste

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 TLS.csv