KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 25 — Malaysia's global ranking in Transparency International's (TI) annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has declined again, falling to 55th out of 176 countries surveyed last year.

This marks the second year that Malaysia fell in the anti-graft watchdog's survey on perceived corruption in the public sector, having ranked 54 out of 168 countries in the 2015 edition.

Malaysia had been improving in the annual rankings, moving from the 54th spot out of 176 countries in 2012 to the 53rd spot out of 177 countries in 2013, and the 50th spot out of 175 countries in 2014.

Putrajaya aims to have Malaysia achieve a ranking of 30th place by 2020.

"It's not impossible, provided we have good leaders, support from the public and make sure MACC is not conducting selective investigation, but this is very important, we must make sure AG does not do selective prosecution, then I can assure we can achieve, if not it's a dream," TI-Malaysia president Datuk Akhbar Satar said when asked if such a goal was still achievable.

Malaysia's poorer rankings last year also comes as its 2016 CPI score fell to 49, the same score that the country had achieved in 2012.

With the scale of 0 to 100 showing a country as falling on the range of "perceived to be highly corrupted" to "perceived to be very clean", Malaysia had in 2013 and 2014 gradually improved its CPI score to 50 and 52, before dropping to 50 again in the 2015 survey.

Akhbar said the CPI score would be a better indicator of a country's performance in fighting corruption, with 50 considered a passing mark and a score of at least 60 required for Malaysia to reach the 30th rung.

According to TI-Malaysia, the number of countries that declined in the CPI index last year was greater than the number of countries that showed improvements.

"69 per cent of the 176 countries on the CPI 2016 scored below 50, exposing how massive and pervasive public sector corruption is around the world," it said in a statement today.

Among its Southeast Asian peers, Malaysia last year was ranked third, just below Singapore and Brunei who had a global ranking of 7th spot and 41th spot with their respective scores of 84 and 58. This marks a decline from Singapore's 2015 score of 85 and Brunei's score of 60 when it was last surveyed.

Prior to Brunei's rejoining of the survey in 2016, Malaysia had ranked second in the previous two years' editions.

Indonesia took the fourth spot within the region with its global ranking of 90 and CPI score of 37, followed by the Philippines (101th, 35), Thailand (101th, 35), Vietnam (113rd, 33), Laos (123rd, 30), Myanmar (136th, 28) and Cambodia (156th, 21).

Within the region where most suffered a decline or maintained scores, the only countries that improved their scores were Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, while the latter two and Singapore went up in their rankings.

According to TI-M, the CPI which focuses on the extent of corruption does not only compare data such as the number of bribes reported or graft court cases, but also looks into the effectiveness of investigators, prosecutors, the courts and the media in the investigation and exposure of corruption.

The CPI, which uses a combination of assessments by both local and foreign experts and surveys from up to 13 reputable institutions, is an influential index relied on by foreign investors.

The eight surveys with an aggregate score of 396 used to calculate Malaysia's 2016 CPI score of 49 are the Bertelsmann Foundation Transformation Index, the Economist Intelligence Unit Country Risk Ratings, the Global Insight Country Risk Ratings, IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Asian Intelligence, Political Risk Services International Country Risk Guide, World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey, and World Justice Project Rule of Law Index.