New Delhi:
India’s passport has been ranked at 86th position by the Henley Passport Index in its rankings of world’s most powerful travel documents. India has got a mobility score of 58 which indicates that the Indian passport holders can travel to same number of countries without a proper visa. China and Pakistan got 74th and 106th positions respectively.
Japan and Singapore notched the first position among 199 countries. Both these countries, by the virtue of their powerful passports, can get visa-free or visa-on-arrival facilities across 180 places in the world.
The index included 199 countries and 227 travel destinations. Many micro states and territories were also included in the category of travel destinations.
Earlier, Germany was holding the first position which has now been unseated this year by Asian countries like Japan and Singapore.
Henley Passport Index ranks the passports on the basis of a nation’s citizen’s ability to access international destinations.
Another Asian nation, South Korea slipped to the second position alongside Finland and Germany.
To quote Chairman of Henley Passport Index, “With a few notable exceptions, the latest rankings from the Henley Passport Index show that countries around the world increasingly view visa openness as crucial to economic and social progress. Discussions of passport power and global mobility tend to focus on the benefits for the countries with the strongest passports. However, this latest unique research appears to confirm something that many of us already knew intuitively: that increased visa-openness benefits the entire global community, and not just the strongest countries.”
Here are the most powerful passports;
1. Japan, Singapore
2. South Korea, Germany, Finland
3. Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg
4. France, Sweden, Spain
5. Austria, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland
6. Norway, UK, US, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Ireland
7. Malta
8. Czech Republic
9. Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Lithuania
10. Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia
