Nicaragua

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Basic Country Information

Region: Latin America & Caribbean
Income Group: Lower Middle Income
Population: 6.92 million
GNI per Capita: 2848 USD
Urban population: 60% of total
Life expectancy at birth: 75 years
Human Development Index (HDI): 0.71

How does Nicaragua control corruption?

Forecasted trend:

Declining

	Integrity	Transparency
Country’s Score	4.11/10	8.5/20
World Rank	101/119	110/143
Regional Rank	17/23	19/23
Income group Rank	25/36	25/36

Index of Public Integrity

IPI Score: 4.11 / 10

The IPI score is the mean of the six components scores, which result from the standardization and normalization of original source data to range between 1 and 10 using a min-max-transformation, with higher values representing better performance.

Components	Component Score (max=10)	World Rank	Income Group Rank	Regional Rank
Opportunities for Corruption
Administrative Burden	0	/119	/36	/23
Trade Openness	0	/119	/36	/23
Administrative Transparency	5.5	67/119	10/36	12/23
Online Services	4.25	97/119	24/36	18/23
Budget Transparency	8.08	46/119	9/36	8/23
Constraints on Corruption
Judicial Independence	1.5	117/119	32/36	17/23
Freedom of the Press	1.38	118/119	32/36	19/23
E-Citizenship	3.97	86/119	14/36	17/23

Opportunities are permanent enabling circumstances for corruption. Empirical evidence exists that administrative discretion (lack of administrative transparency and poor regulation) combined with unaccountable resources (non-transparent public finance, both from domestic sources and international aid) create opportunities for corruption.

Constraints are permanent disabling circumstances of corruption. They encompass the legal response of authorities as well as the response by society (a free press and digitally enabled citizens organized as civil society or as individual voters).

Societies manage to control corruption if they find the right balance between opportunities and constraints.

Transparency in Nicaragua

T-Index Score: 8.5 / 20 (20 = 100%)

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T-Index

World
Average

Income Group
Average

Regional
Average

The total fulfillment of items on De Jure and De Facto adds up to 100%
on the basis of which we calculate the individual performance of a country

De Facto Transparency: 5.5 / 14

De Facto Components ↓ Live, online, and freely accessible sources of public data. These data sources were assessed as complete and freely available (1 point), partial and/or paid access (0.5 point), or missing (0 points).
Past expenditures (last fiscal year)	Yes
Current expenditures (budget tracker)	No
Public Procurement Portal	Partial
Land cadaster	Partial
Register of commerce	Partial
Auditor General's report	Partial
Supreme Court's hearings schedule	No
Supreme Court's rulings	Partial
Financial disclosures for public officials	No
Conflict of interest disclosures	No
Official Development Assistance (ODA)	Partial
Mining concessions	Partial
Building permits in the capital city	No
Official gazette	Yes

De Jure Transparency: 3 / 6

De Jure Components ↓ Formal transparency commitments by governments. Formal agreements that met category criteria (see Methodology) were assessed as existing (1 point) or not (0 points).
Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA)	Yes
Open Government Partnership (OGP)	No
United Nations Conventions Against Corruption (UNCAC)	Yes
Financial Action Task Force Against Money Laundering (or equivalent)	Yes
Plurinational transparency agreement (EITI, OECD, WTO GPA, or CPTPP)	No
Beneficial Ownership	No

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Please download our full dataset here
Note: Links last accessed in December 2024.

Nicaragua's Corruption Forecast

Forecasted trend:

Declining

Nicaragua has significantly declined on judicial independence and freedom of the press for the past ten years. Neither the judiciary nor audit institutions have the capacity and independence to control widespread corruption, nor does civil society, due to a severe crackdown by the government. Civil society and opposition media risk serious consequences when denouncing corruption. Nicaragua has also withdrawn from the Organization of American States after criticism of its quality of governance and its poor human rights record, and the country is not a member of the Open Government Partnership. Nicaragua lags its peers on online transparency in both its region and its income group. Its limited public procurement portal still needs development, as do the digital land cadaster and register of commerce. Judicial transparency is also low. There is no public disclosure of public officials’ assets or conflicts of interest, and the capital city does not publish its building permits information.

Components	2015	2025	Trendline
Budget Transparency	7.37	6.27		0
Judicial Independence	2.88	1.5		-1
Press Freedom	7.33	1.93		-1
E-Citizenship	1.97	3.97		1
Online Services	3.15	4.25		0

positive change; negative change; change not statically significant.

For Budget Transparency, period considered is 2008-2019. For Judicial Independence, last value available is for 2019. Due to insufficient data on Facebook users, E-citizenship was computed as the mean of the remaining two sub-indicators (fixed broadband subscriptions and Internet users). Missing values for 2020 in either of the sub-indicators were replaced with the latest available data point.