PETALING JAYA: Malaysians looking forward to travelling this year will be delighted to know they can visit 179 destinations across the globe visa-free, thanks to our ranking as the 14th most powerful passport in the world, according to the Henley Passport Index.
However, this is a slight drop in the rankings from 2022, when Malaysia had bagged the 13th place.
The fall is due to an increase in the power of the Polish, Hungarian, Slovakian and Lithuanian passports which edged ahead with more destinations.
However, the Malaysian passport managed to outperform all other Asean countries, except Singapore which ranks joint second with South Korea.
The index ranks all 199 passports of the world based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA), cross-checking each against all 227 travel destinations in the world, including those that don’t issue their own passports.
This year’s top 15 most powerful passports are:
- Japan (193 destinations)
- Singapore, South Korea (192)
- Germany, Spain (190)
- Finland, Italy, Luxembourg (189)
- Austria, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden (188)
- France, Ireland, Portugal, United Kingdom (187)
- Belgium, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, US (186)
- Australia, Canada, Greece, Malta (185)
- Hungary, Poland (184)
- Lithuania, Slovakia (183)
- Latvia, Slovenia (182)
- Estonia (181)
- Iceland (180)
- Malaysia (179)
- Liechtenstein, United Arab Emirates (178)
For each travel destination that does not require a visa or can obtain an electronic travel authority (ETA) or visitor’s permit upon arrival, a passport’s mobility score increases by one.
However, destinations where visas are required, or in need of government approval for a visa on arrival, are not considered “visa-free” and do not contribute to the score.