Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha praised on Sunday the country's progress in graft watchdog Transparency International's corruption perceptions index.

"We have won a very important fight," said Berisha at a press conference. "The fight against corruption is the fight against the mother of all evils," he added.

Albania made a jump of 0.5 points in the Transparency International index from 2.9 in 2007 to 3.4 in 2008. The report rates a country's perceived corruption from zero to ten, where zero stands for extremely corrupt and ten for where graft is perceived to be absent.

This year's result represented the best score card in the region. Macedonia registered an improvement of 0.3 points, Serbia stayed at the same level while Montenegro, Greece, Rumania and Slovenia registered a 0.1 point step up. The index for both Bosnia and Moldova dropped by 0.1 points.

Albania jumped 20 places from 105 to 85 in 180 countries rated in the index.

"An official task force created to fight corruption and economic crime has increased the number of officials prosecuted and sentenced for corruption, also building confidence among the public that corruption can be punished in Albania," the report said.

"The report recognises indisputably the government's merit in the fight against corruption," said Berisha.

BalkanInsight             29/09/2008