Philippine passport. INQUIRER file photo / MARIANNE BERMUDEZ
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Friday that the results of the passport power index, which showed that the Philippine passport has further reduced its strength, is something that can be “disregarded.”
During the hearing of the Senate committee on foreign relations, DFA Office of Consular Affairs Executive Director Maria Alnee Gamble said that the recent 2021 Henley Passport Index (HPI) is “opinion-based,” adding that travel restrictions due to pandemic affected passports of many other countries and not only the Philippines.
“Our position on this is, this [ranking] is something that we can disregard because it is something that is put together by other people, by travelers. So it is opinion-based,” Gamble said.
“With the pandemic, a lot of passports are also affected and not just ours because we have entry bans. So when we have entry bans, other countries will also have entry bans against us,” she added.
Gamble said a lot of countries had to stop accepting travelers from several countries with “powerful” passports due to the pandemic.
Nonetheless, Senator Francis Tolentino said that the results of the passport index should not be taken lightly.
The Philippine passport dropped to 82nd place in the 2021 Henley Passport Index from last year’s 74th position. This latest ranking is the lowest for the country’s main international travel document since 2006.
Henley & Partners, a global citizenship and residence advisory firm that oversees the global ranking of countries based on the travel freedom of its passport holders, said each passport is scored based on the total number of destinations a holder of the passport can access visa-free.
For now, according to the 2021 HPI, Philippine passport holders have a total of only 66 visa-free destinations.
The most powerful passports, according to the index, are those of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Germany, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, and Spain.