WASHINGTON, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Many developing country governments making important gains in control of corruption, and some of them matching rich country performance in overall governance measures, according to a report released by the World Bank on Tuesday.

    "Some countries are making rapid progress in governance, including in Africa, showing that a measure of 'Afro-optimism' is called for," said Daniel Kaufmann, co-author of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and Director of Governance at the World Bank Institute.

    Meanwhile he also acknowledged that the data also shows large variation in performance across countries, and even among neighbors within each continent.

    "Progress reflects reforms in those countries where political leaders, policymakers, civil society and the private sector view good governance and corruption control as crucial for sustained and shared growth," he said.

    Good governance can be found at all income levels, with some emerging economies matching the performance of rich countries on key dimensions of governance.

    Over a dozen emerging countries, including Slovenia, Chile, Botswana, Estonia, Uruguay, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mauritius, and Costa Rica score higher on key dimensions of governance than industrialized countries such as Greece or Italy. And in many cases these differences are statistically significant.

    Over 2002-2007, the Indicators show sharp improvements in governance, along with reversals. Examples include strong improvements in Voice and Accountability in countries such as Ukraine and Haiti; improvements in Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism in Argentina; and improvements in Control of Corruption in Georgia and Tanzania.

    But despite governance gains in some countries, overall quality of governance around the world has not improved much over the past decade, according to the report.

    This year's study is the seventh update of the WGI, a decade-long effort by the researchers to build and update the most comprehensive cross-country set of governance indicators currently available.

    "The WGI and other efforts to measure are useful in prompting public discussion of governance challenges and successes" said Aart Kraay, coauthor of the WGI and lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank.

    "But at the same time, discussions of governance based on empirical measures need to be realistic about the limits of existing data," he noted.