BY NED GAGAHE
Transparency Solomon Islands (TSI) is urging the government and the public not to celebrate prematurely following the country’s one-point improvement in the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI).
Solomon Islands scored 44 out of 100 in the latest CPI released on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, ranking 73rd out of 180 countries. The result marks a one-point increase from last year and a rise of three places globally.
However, TSI Chair Rodney Kingmele cautioned that the marginal gain does not signal meaningful progress in the fight against corruption.
“Whilst it’s an improvement by one point, I don’t think we should be too focused on that and become complacent.
“When we look at the past five years, we have been fluctuating around 42, 43 and 44. That tells us we are stagnant,” Kingmele said.
Kingmele said the small increase should not distract us from ongoing governance concerns, including recent issues surrounding the appointment of the Director General of the Solomon Islands Independent Commission Against Corruption (SIICAC).
He said that although data may have detected slight improvements based on perception sources used in compiling the CPI, the broader trend shows little structural change.
“Overall, over the past five years, we are hovering around the same score. That one-point improvement should not cause us to say we are improving significantly. We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
In the Pacific region, Fiji scored 55, while Vanuatu dropped to 47 and Papua New Guinea fell sharply to 26. Solomon Islands remains positioned in the middle, a standing Kingmele says presents both an opportunity to learn and a responsibility to strengthen governance systems.
TSI Executive Officer, Ruth Liloqula echoed the warning, describing the improvement as “not significant.”
“What it tells us is that we still have weak institutions of integrity that are unable to hold power to account,” Liloqula said.
She said the slight rise in score was largely due to continued efforts by the media and civil society organisations advocating for transparency and accountability, rather than sweeping government reforms.
“In general, we should congratulate the media, civil society and some integrity institutions that are doing their part. But otherwise, in the fight against corruption, our score shows we are stagnant,” she said.
Liloqula said longstanding institutional weaknesses, noting that key oversight bodies such as the Leadership Code Commission and SIICAC have gone without substantive leadership for extended periods.
“The Leadership Code Commission was left without a head for quite a long time. SIICAC is the same. When you look at court cases, they are there, but government often loses its cases,” she said.
She added that while there are encouraging signs among some new Members of Parliament who appear willing to take independent stands, this alone is not enough to drive systemic reform.
“There are signs within the political leadership that certain new MPs are making a stand on their own. That’s different from the usual rhetoric we saw in the last government. It’s a good sign, but it’s not enough,” Liloqula said.
TSI argues that persistent corruption continues to affect service delivery across the public sector.
“We still have a highly corrupt public sector, which means poor service delivery,” Liloqula stated.
The CPI measures perceived levels of public sector corruption based on assessments from multiple sources. A score of 100 indicates a very clean public sector, while 0 reflects high levels of perceived corruption.
Although Solomon Islands’ global ranking improved by three places this year, TSI maintains that the minimal score increase does not represent substantial reform.
“The numbers show we are standing still. We should not be satisfied with that,” Kingmele said.
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