Vietnam has climbed six places to rank 82nd on the list of the world’s most powerful passports as Vietnamese enjoy visa-free entry to 55 destinations, according to the latest quarterly Henley Passport Index (HPI).

The Southeast Asian country holds the same rank as Cambodia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mali, according to the third-quarter 2023 HPI report released on Tuesday by UK-based global citizenship and residency consulting firm Henley & Partners.

In the previous report, issued in January, the Vietnamese passport placed 88th.

In Southeast Asia, the Vietnamese passport is now more powerful than that of Laos (87th) and Myanmar (89th), but it is inferior to that of Malaysia (11th), Brunei (20th), Timor Leste (55th), Thailand (64th), Indonesia (69th), and the Philippines (74th).

Singapore has surpassed Japan to claim the title of having the world’s most powerful passport, allowing visa-free access to 192 out of 227 countries and territories.

Germany, Italy, and Spain share the second position with visa exemptions from 190 destinations. 

In 8th place, the U.S. passport remains in the top 10 of the world’s most powerful passports even though it has seen the smallest increase in its index score over the last decade.

“The story is a simple one – by more or less standing still, the U.S. has fallen behind,” CNBC quoted Greg Lindsay, an urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, as saying.

He added that the U.S. has been “steadily overtaken” by South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.

Japan, which held the No. 1 position for five consecutive years, has now dropped to third place, along with South Korea, Austria, Finland, France, Luxembourg, and Sweden. 

In 103rd place was Afghanistan, whose citizens enjoy visa-free entry to just 27 destinations.

Based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the HPI ranks all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa. 

With a rich history and 18 years of data, the HPI covers 199 different passports and 227 different travel destinations. 

Updated quarterly, the index is considered the standard reference tool for global citizens and sovereign states when assessing where a passport ranks on the global mobility spectrum, according to Henley & Partners.  

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