Germany tops power passport list

SINGAPORE Germans turn out to have the most powerful passport that grants the owner a visa-free or visa-on-arrival welcome in 157 countries worldwide.

According to the latest PassportIndex.Org data, Singapore overtook South Korea to take the second place with a visa-free score of 156, becoming the highest-ranked Asian passport.

South Korea fell to sixth place (152) while Japan rose to fourth place, tied with European countries such as Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and others whose visa-free score reached 154.

Visa-free score represents the number of countries a passport holder can visit visa-free, or with visa-on-arrival.

First introduced in January 2016 by PassportIndex.org, travellers can now compare changes that occurred in one year.

Marshall Islands was identified in the year-on-year comparisons for adding 35 countries to its visa-free score since the first index. Palau, Micronesia followed with 34 additional countries, while Solomon Islands and Tuvalu added 33. Peru was the biggest winner in South America with an additional 31 countries.

The newly added World Openness Score tracks the progression of freedom of mobility across the globe. The World Openness Score in 2016 was 17,925. In the few days of 2017 the score  increased to 17,948. This trend shows an opening of borders, but will it continue? With the recent backlash on globalisation, the World Openness Score may be in danger of declining.

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