Why Some Passports Open Doors - And Others Don't

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0:00I am here in Singapore which once again has the world's most powerful passport in the

0:05Henley Passport Index. That means Singaporeans can travel to more places than anybody else.

0:12Over the past two decades on the Henley Passport Index,

0:15some countries have seen dramatic gains while others have quietly slipped.

0:20The standout climber is the United Arab Emirates. Since 2006,

0:25the UAE has added 151 visa-free destinations and climbed 57 places in the rankings.

0:33The UAE has shot up the rankings and it's not by

0:36accident. It it's obviously been a very considered move by the UAE authorities

0:41as part of their wider strategy to establish the UAE as a hub for business within the region.

0:47This shift is visible even among long-established powers.

0:51The United States and the United Kingdom, who once held the top spot jointly in 2014,

0:57now sit at number ten and seven respectively.

1:01But in real terms, dozens of countries now rank equally or above them.

1:07Over the past year alone, both recorded their steepest annual drops in visa-free access.

1:13In practice, traveling with a weak passport often means lengthy visa weights,

1:17high rejection rates, uncertain travel plans, and missed meetings.

1:22This is where the passport index shifts from travel to economics.

1:26The friction really is delaying business because a lot of the time,

1:30particularly with urgent moves, they needed to have happened

1:33yesterday because that's what created the urgency for the move in the first place.

1:37Passport rankings capture that shift in a single number. But the real story

1:42is about who still has access and who increasingly faces friction.

1:47In other areas, we're seeing countries that did have stronger passports are

1:52falling down that list. That's as a direct result in many cases of stricter immigration

1:58policies and increasingly those changes could be far more rapid than what we've seen before.