Country profile - VNM

Corruption in Vietnam

6 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 68.7 (2022).

Grand: 59.5 Petty: 66.9 Latest observed: 2020

Vietnam: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Vietnam is Red River Delta (64/100), and the least corrupt is Mekong River Delta (72.1/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 6 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Vietnam's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 68.7/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Red River Delta (SCI 64/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Mekong River Delta (SCI 72.1/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 59.5/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 66.9/100 (last directly observed in 2020).
  • Trend: Vietnam's SCI moved from 63.2/100 (1995) to 68.7/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 6 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Vietnam 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 Vietnam into 6 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 68.7 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 6 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

70 60 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 Red River Delta VNMr101 1995-2022 64
2 North East, North West VNMr102 1995-2022 64.8
3 Central Highlands VNMr104 1995-2022 69.6
4 North Central Coast and South Central Coast VNMr103 1995-2022 70.5
5 South East VNMr105 1995-2022 71.2
6 Mekong River Delta VNMr106 1995-2022 72.1

Download Vietnam

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 VNM.csv