Most Powerful Passports 2020

Passport Index 2020

According to the latest Passport Power Index, Japan has the highest-ranking passport in the world with visa-free access to 191 countries. Japan is closely followed by Singapore, South Korea and Germany. Unfortunately none of those countries offer Citizenship by Investment programmes however there are several European countries in the Top 10 that do and several Caribbean countries that offer attractive and affordable options with a great deal of visa free access.

Spain (5th), Portugal (7th), Ireland (7th), Greece (8th) and Malta (9th) were all highly ranked among the worlds strongest passports, with visa-free access to more than 183 countries globally. This is encouraging news for Golden Visa investors considering these European programmes. The various Caribbean countries offering Citizenship by Investment also scored fairly high on the scale. St Kitts, Anitgua, St Lucia, Grenada and Dominica were all placed reasonably high spanning 27th -37th place with visa-free access to between 139 and 154 countries.

The countries with the lowest-ranked passports on the list were Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan with visa-free travel to less than 32 countries. We see great demand from investors in these countries (amongst many others) due to their unfortunate lack of global mobility.

Invest for Value

While the Passport Index is helpful in counting the number of countries a passport has visa free access to it is a fairly simple measure. Not all countries are equal for the desire or need to travel. Kiribati would count the same as France and Afghanistan the same as USA. What matters more is the “value” or “quality” of those countries. Something the passport index alone does not measure.

To enhance the quality of information for our clients La Vida has developed proprietary software to produce the Passport Value Report. This not only measures quality through both GDP and Visitor Popularity but it also considers the combination of both the primary and second passport together.

Example: a Nigerian passport holder has visa free access to 54 destinations. That’s a modest 23.8% of the 227 countries and territories worldwide. However the quality of those destinations is far worse equating to just 2.1% of World GDP and 3.1% of international travel popularity. Add a Grenada passport as an investment and GDP access rises to 58.4% and 71.3% for travel popularity.

This information is only produced by La Vida and is not currently published. So for a personal assessment for your country and an investment combination please contact one of our specialist consultants.