MONTREAL, CANADA – The New Zealand passport has been ranked as “mostpowerful” travel document in the world, according to the latest rankingissued by the Passport Index on Monday.
The Passport Index is one of the several indices which measure the amountof visa-free world travel. It looks at the passports of 193 United Nationsmembers and six territories.
Different factors that include a mobility score, visa requirements,electronic travel authorisation, and a world openness score are measured torank a country.
New Zealand currently has visa-free access, or visa on arrival entry, to129 countries and regions, up from 80 during the COVID-19 pandemic earlierthis year. However, last year, the number of countries and regions, towhich New Zealand has visa-free access, was 169.
Besides New Zealand and Japan the countries in the top 10 are Germany,Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland, South Korea and Australia.
Pakistani passport is at 70th position as it has visa free access to eightcountries and visa on entry in 30 countries.
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The US passport has also dropped its ranking to the 21st place due tomishandling the novel coronaviurs pandemic.
The Passport Index was launched by Arton Capital, a financial services firmwith a head office in Montreal, Canada, in 2014. The Passport Index is theoriginal interactive passport ranking tool in the world.
It is the only real-time global ranking of the world’s passports, updatedas frequently as new visa waivers and changes are implemented, according toits official website.
