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JAPAN TOPS THE HENLEY PASSPORT INDEX OFFERING VISA-FREE ACCESS

JAPANESE passports top the Henley Passport Index by offering visa-free access to 191 destinations by 2021. Meanwhile, Indonesia is in 74th position. On the Henley Passport Index page, Asian countries dominate the Henley Passport Index in the top 5. Noted, 3 of them are Asian countries.

The second position on the Henley Passport Index list is occupied by Singapore with a score of 190 or only one point adrift of Japan. Meanwhile, Germany and South Korea are in 3rd place on the Henley Passport Index list.

Meanwhile, the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, and Belgium are in 7th position with a score of 185. As for the 74th position with a score of 71 there are a number of countries such as Indonesia, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Zambia.

On its website, the index lists the Henley Passport Index, which is the original ranking of all world passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa.

The rankings are based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the largest and most accurate travel information database in the world, and is enhanced by ongoing research by the Henley & Partners Research Department.

To note, currently the COVID-19 pandemic has not subsided. Launching from CNN, Japan has even declared a national emergency in the country’s capital city and its surroundings due to positive cases of COVID-19 which have surged to the highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.

The emergency declaration will go into effect until February 2 and apply to Tokyo and the three neighboring prefectures of Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa. While Suga has been criticized for what he sees as his reluctance to take action to combat the spread of the virus, the governor of Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures urged him to issue an emergency declaration during a televised press conference last week.

Japan’s first state of emergency, declared last spring, relatively early in the pandemic, lasted more than a month, and saw non-essential schools and businesses close. Suga is scheduled to hold a press conference to detail the new steps. [antaranews/photo special]