World’s most powerful passports: Singapore on top; India rises 5 places

The Federal
19 July 2023 8:35 PM IST (Updated:2023-07-19 15:11:56)

Japan has lost the top spot in the world’s most powerful passports’ list for the first time in five years while India’s ranking has risen five places to 80, according to The Henley Passport Index: Q3 2023 Global Ranking released on Tuesday (July 18).

Singapore is now officially the most powerful passport in the world, with its citizens able to visit 192 travel destinations out of 227 around the world visa-free.

The latest rankings are based on exclusive and official data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Also read: World’s top power-passports in 2022 revealed; here’s full list, India’s rank

While Japan has moved down to third, Germany, Italy, and Spain all have moved up into second place with visa-free access to 190 destinations, and Japanese passport holders join those of six other nations — Austria, Finland, France, Luxembourg, South Korea, and Sweden — in third place with access to189 destinations without a prior visa, Henley and Partners said in a press release.

In January this year, India’s passport was ranked 85 giving visa-free entry for its citizens to 59 destinations worldwide. Now, India is ranked 80 with a visa-free score of 57.

Henley & Partners said it has conducted “exclusive new research” into the relationship between a country’s openness to foreigners — how many nations it allows to cross its borders visa-free — and its own citizens’ travel freedom, gauged using the Henley Passport Index. The new Henley Openness Index ranks all 199 countries worldwide according to the number of nationalities they permit entry to without a prior visa.

Also read: Japan enjoys world’s most powerful passport; India ranks 85

The Top 20 ‘most open’ countries are all small island nations or African states, except for Cambodia. There are 12 completely open countries that offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to all 198 passports in the world (not counting their own), namely: Burundi, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Micronesia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Samoa, Seychelles, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu. At the bottom of the Henley Openness Index, four countries score zero, permitting no visa-free access for any passport: namely, Afghanistan, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, and Turkmenistan. They are followed by five countries that provide visa-free access to fewer than five other nationalities: namely, Libya, Bhutan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, and India.

The UK appears to have finally turned the corner after a six-year decline, jumping up two places on the latest ranking to 4th place — a position it last held in 2017.

The US, on the other hand, continues its now decade-long slide down the index, plummeting a further two places to eighth spot with access to just 184 destinations visa-free.

Also read: Over 9 lakh Indians relinquished citizenship since 2014: Govt data

Both the UK and the US jointly held first place on the index nearly 10 years ago in 2014 but have been on a downward trajectory ever since.

Afghanistan, Pakistan in bottom four

Afghanistan remains entrenched at the bottom (103) of the Henley Passport Index, with a visa-free access score of just 27, followed by Iraq (score of 29, rank 102), Syria (score of 30, rank 101) and Pakistan (score of 33, rank 100) — the four weakest passports in the world.

“The general trend over the history of the 18-year-old ranking has been towards greater travel freedom, with the average number of destinations travellers are able to access visa-free nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 109 in 2023. However, the global mobility gap between those at the top and bottom of the index is now wider than it has ever been, with top-ranked Singapore able to access 165 more destinations visa-free than Afghanistan,” Henley Passport Index said.

Also read: 8,000 high net-worth individuals likely to leave India in 2022: Survey

America’s diminishing passport power

Of the countries sitting in the Top 10, the US has seen the smallest increase in its score on the Henley Passport Index over the past decade, securing visa-free access to just 12 additional destinations between 2013 and 2023. Singapore, by comparison, has increased its score by 25, pushing it five places up the ranking over the past 10 years to number one spot.

How passport rankings are calculated

The Henley Passport Index compares the visa-free access of 199 different passports to 227 travel destinations. If no visa is required, then a score with value = 1 is created for that passport. The same applies if you can obtain a visa on arrival, a visitor’s permit, or an electronic travel authority (ETA) when entering the destination.

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Where a visa is required, or where a passport holder has to obtain a government-approved electronic visa (e-Visa) before departure, a score with value = 0 is assigned. This also applies if you need pre-departure government approval for a visa on arrival.

The total score for each passport is equal to the number of destinations for which no visa is required (value = 1).

Also read: Singapore to be home to highest number of millionaires in Asia-Pacific by 2030

World’s most powerful passports (Top 5), according to Henley Passport Index

1. Singapore (Via-free score 192)
2. Germany, Italy, Spain (190)
3. Austria, Finland, France, Japan, Luxembourg, South Korea, Sweden (189)
4. Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom (188)
5. Belgium, Czech Republic, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland (187)

Weakest passports (Bottom 5)