OREANDA-NEWS. October 29, 2010. Estonia was ranked 26th with a score of 6.5 in the new Corruption Preceptions Index of Transparency International that covers 178 countries and measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption, writes aripaev.ee.

Although this is one position up from last year's ranking when Estonia got 6.6 points, Estonia climbed up one position because one country was excluded from the list in this year's ranking for failing to collect sufficient information on corruption perception.

According to the ranking organization, 10 indicates totally corruption-free society while 0 shows that the country is fully corrupt.

The top three were Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore who got 9.3 points each. Finland was fourth.

Lithuania was ranked 46th and scored 5 points.

Latvia was ranked 59th and scored 4.3 points, down 0.2 points in a year. In 2008 Latvia scored 5.

The Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 is based on the joint assessment by business-people and analysts of the level of corruption in a country, and each country is rated on a scale of one to ten, with a score of ten indicating absence of corruption, and zero indicating absolute corruption.