Panama remains in the bottom third of the World ranking in transparency, and is in bad company nearer the bottom when it come to corruption.

The figures come  from  a report published in Berlin on Wednesday, November 30 by Transparency International (TI). 

Chile and Uruguay are the leaders in transparency in Latin America, while Venezuela and Paraguay are perceived as the most corrupt, according to the In the 2011 edition of its traditional Index of Corruption Perception (CPI), only three of the twenty Latin American countries in the area reached a level of perceived transparency of the public sector.

 "Chile marks the line and the rest of Latin America will continue to gradually”.  Most Latin American countries scoring low on the table suffer from "weak institutions"  where the government or major political actor - "regardless of whether the left or right" - is "very strong", so "there is no balance of power."

On a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very transparent), Chile (7.2) ranked 22 out of 183 countries surveyed, Uruguay (7.9) 25 and Puerto Rico (5.6) for 39, while Nicaragua (2.5), Paraguay ( 2.2) and Venezuela (1.9) occupied caboose at positions 134, 154 and 172, respectively. 

Costa Rica  scored 4.8 and Cuba 4.2) followed by Brazil (3.8) above- Colombia (3.4), El Salvador (3.4), Peru (3.4) and Panama (3.3). Argentina and Mexico are at 3.0. on the level of ten-Malawi and Indonesia, and then the ranking Bolivia managed to locate (2.8), Ecuador (2.7), Guatemala (2.7), Dominican Republic (2.6) and Honduras (2.6). 

Compared to last year, most Latin American countries analyzed showed minor variations, with the positive  exceptions of Cuba and El Salvador, which recorded increases of substance, and the decline of Costa Rica.