The Singapore passport has been listed as the world’s most powerful yet again by the Henley Passport Index.
It now offers visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 192 destinations across the globe, according to a press release on Tuesday (21 July).
The Henley Passport Index (HPI) was launched by advisory firm Henley & Partners in 2006, with the latest ranking its 20th anniversary edition.
It ranks passports according to how “powerful” they are, i.e. how many destinations holders of the passports can travel to without needing to apply for a visa first.
The ranking is based on data from the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA’s) database of travel information.
It includes 199 passports and 227 travel destinations.
Singapore has been in top spot since 2023, which makes this the third consecutive year that it has kept its pole position.
The last time Singapore was knocked off top spot was in January 2023, when it was beaten by Japan and slid into second place together with South Korea.
As the index is released twice a year, this is the seventh consecutive ranking where Singapore is No. 1.
It’s a steady improvement from the Republic’s ranking of eighth in the inaugural index in 2006, with its lowest ranking of 11th notched in 2010.
Source: Henley & Partners
In the latest ranking, Japan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) tied for second place with visa-free access to four fewer destinations than Singapore.
Source: Henley Passport Index
The UAE was the biggest mover, climbing three places since January’s ranking.
While Sweden is the sole country in third spot, 11 European countries share fourth with a score of 186, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.
The United States (US) is a comparatively lowly No. 10, while our neighbour Malaysia is No. 7 — the fourth-highest Asian country on the list.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel again is Afghanistan in 104th place, with a score of only 22 and 170 fewer destinations than Singapore.
Henley & Partners noted that there is a strong positive relationship between a destination’s passport power and its peacefulness.
Singapore is No. 8 on the Global Peace Index (GPI), with other destinations that did well on the HPI also performing strongly on the GPI.
In contrast, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, which are among the world’s least peaceful nations, also have the world’s weakest passports.
This illustrates “the impact that conflict, instability, and state fragility have on international mobility”, Henley & Partners said.
However, some of the outliers are the US and Israel, Henley & Partners added.
Despite the US being No. 134 out of 163 destinations in the GPI and Israel (No. 159) the fifth-least peaceful nation in the world, both countries have “exceptionally powerful passports”, it maintained.
It cited both countries’ “decades of accumulated diplomatic capital, geopolitical influence, economic importance, and international confidence in the integrity of their institutions and travel documents”, and pointed to the fact that “passport power is shaped by far more than peacefulness alone”.
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Featured image from MS News.