Malta has moved up 2 places to 43^rd in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2014, which indexes 175 countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be.

But this slight improvement in rank appears to be due to worsening perceptions elsewhere, as Malta's score on the index is slightly worse than the one it achieved last year.

In its annual index, Transparency International, an international NGO that monitors and publicises corporate and political corruption scores countries and territories on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 indicates a highly corrupt country and 100 a very clean one.

Once more, the highest score - 92 - is obtained by Denmark, which last year shared top place with New Zealand. New Zealand kept last year's score of 91, and was ranked second, followed by Finland with a score of 89.

At the other end of the scale, North Korea and Somalia propped up the bottom with a score of just 8, with Sudan faring only slightly better with 11.

Malta's score is somewhat average at 55, but with most countries failing to obtain a passing grade - Slovakia's score of 50 earned it 54^th place - it still earned itself 43^rd place, a ranking it shares with Latvia and the Seychelles.

A score of 56 had earned Malta 45^th place in the 2013 index - which included 177 countries and territories - and a score of 57 had earned the country 43^rd place in 2012.

Malta's ranking puts it in 19^th place among the EU members this year, as had been the case in 2013. It had been ranked 18^th among EU members in 2012.