Politics
What is the World’s Most Powerful Passport?
The World’s Most Powerful Passports
Which passports are travel assets, and which are liabilities?
The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.
Whether you seek to explore distant lands, or you just want to sit on a remote island beach with a margarita, your passport can be your biggest travel asset. The right document grants you visa-free access to over 150+ countries, and makes applying for entry to the other places a short and easy afterthought.
But a passport can also be your biggest liability. Having a passport from the wrong place means travel is extremely restricted to just a few countries – and these are generally not the places travelers want to go, anyways.
Even worse, passports on the lower end of the spectrum are also heavily scrutinized at entry-points around the world. If you have a document from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, or several other countries, there may be many hoops for you to jump through to get to your final destination.
The Most Powerful Passport
According to the Passport Index, the distinction for the world’s most powerful passport actually ends up as a tie between Germany and Singapore. Both have unparalleled access to visa-free entries, each with a list of 159 countries that citizens can go to without any hassles.
Like Germany, most other Western European nations do similarly well in the visa-free department:
| Global Passport Rank | Country | Number of Countries (Visa-Free) |
|---|---|---|
| #1 (tie) | Germany | 159 |
| #2 (tie) | Sweden | 158 |
| #3 (tie) | Denmark | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | Finland | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | Italy | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | France | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | Spain | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | Norway | 157 |
| #3 (tie) | United Kingdom | 157 |
In Asia, however, things are quite different. After Singapore and a few other countries (Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia), things drop off faster.
| Global Passport Rank | Country | Number of Countries (Visa-Free) |
|---|---|---|
| #1 (tie) | Singapore | 159 |
| #2 (tie) | South Korea | 158 |
| #3 (tie) | Japan | 157 |
| #5 (tie) | Malaysia | 155 |
| #16 | Hong Kong | 142 |
| #18 | Israel | 138 |
| #19 (tie) | Brunei | 136 |
| #24 | UAE | 128 |
| #30 | Taiwan | 121 |
Further down the list in Asia, citizens of certain countries find themselves in even a tougher place, especially if they reside in the Middle East. Countries like Afghanistan (22), Pakistan (25), Iraq (26), Syria (30), and Bangladesh (35) have some of the shortest lists of visa-free countries that citizens have access to.
North America
In North America, the United States and Canada both have powerful passports with 157 and 155 visa-free options respectively.
However, they differ in a few key areas. Americans have visa-free access to Armenia, Equatorial Guinea, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Central African Republic, while Canadians have visa-free access to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Gambia.
Don’t Own These Passports…
We alluded earlier to the fact that a passport can also be a traveler’s biggest liability.
Here are some of the countries that you would likely not want to have a passport from:
| Global Passport Rank | Country | Number of Countries (Visa-Free) |
|---|---|---|
| #89 (tie) | Sri Lanka | 36 |
| #89 (tie) | Nepal | 36 |
| #89 (tie) | Iran | 36 |
| #89 (tie) | Yemen | 36 |
| #89 (tie) | Sudan | 36 |
| #90 | Bangladesh | 35 |
| #91 | Somalia | 33 |
| #92 | Syria | 30 |
| #93 | Iraq | 26 |
| #94 | Pakistan | 25 |
| #95 | Afghanistan | 22 |
Countries
Ranked: Share of Global Arms Exports in 2022
The U.S. is the biggest weapons exporter in the world, but which other countries take up a significant share of global arms exports in 2022? And how has that share changed over time?
Ranked: Share of Global Arms Exports 2018–2022
In 2022, global military budgets hit $2.2 trillion, an eighth consecutive year of increase.
Part of those budgets were used for the procurement of arms, but which countries are major weapons suppliers, and how do they influence the global arms trade?
We chart out the top 10 countries with the biggest share of global arms exports using data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Which Country Exports the Most Weapons?
The U.S. is the biggest weapons exporter, accounting for 40% of the total volume of international arms transfers between 2018–2022. Nearly one-fifth of these exports headed to Saudi Arabia, and other significant amounts went to Japan (8.6%) and Australia (8.4%).
Below we rank the biggest weapons exporters by share of total volume traded in 2018–2022, as well as their growth or decline from trends recorded in 2013–2017.
| Rank | Country | % share of global arms exports (2018-2022) | % change between 2013-17 & 2018-22 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇺🇸 U.S. | 40% | +14% |
| 2 | 🇷🇺 Russia | 16% | -31% |
| 3 | 🇫🇷 France | 11% | +44% |
| 4 | 🇨🇳 China | 5% | -23% |
| 5 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 4% | -35% |
| 6 | 🇮🇹 Italy | 4% | +45% |
| 7 | 🇬🇧 UK | 3% | -35% |
| 8 | 🇪🇸 Spain | 3% | -4% |
| 9 | 🇰🇷 South Korea | 2% | +74% |
| 10 | 🇮🇱 Israel | 2% | -15% |
| N/A | 🌐 Rest of World | 9% | N/A |
Russia (16%) and France (11%) rank close together, followed by China (5%) and Germany (4%) to round out the top five major arms exporters.
However France’s export volumes grown considerably (+44%) from the previous five-year period, thanks to big sales to India, which included 62 combat aircraft and four submarines, one-third of all French weapons trade. This has resulted in France leapfrogging the U.S. as India’s second-largest weapons supplier after Russia.
On the other hand, Russia’s exports by volume has decreased (-31%) even before sanctions kicked in after the invasion of Ukraine. Its biggest trade partners, India and China, have prioritized developing their own weapons industries.
South Korea’s Surging Weapons Exports
Another country whose arms sales are skyrocketing is South Korea, which ranks 9th in the overall share of global arms exports, but has seen a 74% increase in its export volumes. Key recipients include the Philippines, India, and Thailand.
South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has pledged to grow his country into the world’s fourth largest arms exporter by 2027.
Interestingly, South Korea is one of three countries which is both a top-10 arms exporter and importer (along with China and the U.S.) as it has many takers for domestically produced military equipment, while simultaneously being reliant on American-produced long-range missiles and advanced combat aircraft.
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