Singapore Has World’s Most Powerful Passport! India Ranked Lowly #75

Passport, the gateway to other countries and a requirement to cross boundaries has been one of the most sought after power-gauging tool since a long time.

Passport Index conducts a global survey of all passports, and then ranks them based on their power and acceptability, every year. This research is being done by global financial advisory firm Arton Capital.

In this year’s ranking, Singapore has emerged as the most powerful passport in the world, beating the ranks of US, UK and Germany, considered as the most powerful nations.

Indian passport has again lost steam, as we are ranked a lowly #75 globally, which is slightly better than last year, but still, very disappointing indeed.

Afghanistan has world’s least powerful passport, as it is ranked #93.

Hence, only 18 countries are below India, in this high profile ranking of passports.

What needs to be changed for India?

Global Ranking: Singapore Passport Is The Best!

The ranking by Passport Index found Singapore to be the world’s most powerful passport, and this is for the first time that an Asian country has reached the pinnacle of this ranking.

Singapore has a visa-free score of 159, which means a citizen having Singapore passport can have visa-free access to 173 countries, the highest so far.

In India’s case, an Indian passport will only allow visa-free entry in 24 countries 27 countries provide visa-on-arrival option, and this is the reason that we are ranked #75 in this list.

Atleast, we have fared better than our neighbours. While Bangladesh is ranked 90 and Nepal/Sri Lanka both are ranked #89, Pakistan is ranked 93, along with Iraq and Bhutan is ranked #76.

China, on the other hand, has fared badly as well in this ranking. But they have been able to beat India, as they are ranked #67, with visa-free score of 60.

Here are the top 10 passports of this world:

1. Singapore (visa-free score of 159)
2. Germany (visa-free score of 158)
3. Sweden and South Korea (visa-free score of 157)
4. Denmark, FInland, Italy, France, Spain, UK, Norway and Japan (visa-free score of 156)
5. Luxembourg, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Portugal (visa-free score of 155)
6. Malaysia, Ireland, USA, Canada (visa-free score of 154)
7. Greece, New Zealand, Australia (visa-free score of 153)
8. Malta, Czechia, Iceland (visa-free score of 152)
9. Hungry (visa-free score of 150)
10. Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia (visa-free score of 149)

Other Major Countries:

• #16: Hong Kong
• #19 Israel
• #26 UAE
• #32 Taiwan
• #40 Russia
• #43 Turkey
• #54 Thailand
• #75 India

You can find the complete ranking here; and the methodology of deriving this ranking here.