The Maltese passport given a ‘Gold’ standard among all other passports of CIPs, in a newly released 2018 STC Passport Index. The report classifies rates the passport value as Gold or Silver standard.
Malta is the only Citizenship by Investment program offering the Gold passport, most other programs, like those in the Caribbean including Cyprus, carry the Silver standard
- A GOLD passport enables visa-free travel to the US and Europe.
- A SILVER passport enable visa-free to Europe.
- A BRONZE passport offers visa-free travel to the UK
These two main standards will facilitate the classification of Citizenship by Investment programs according to whether a country offers a “Gold” or “Silver” passport.
About
The 2018 STC Passport Index ranks every country in the world based on the quality of their passport. Over 200 countries & territories are reviewed and updated on an annual basis.
Other Indexes rank passports solely on their Visa-Free score, meaning they are ranked by how many countries you can travel to without having to apply for a visa beforehand. Visa-free score is an easy measurement, as it represents a clear number. Unfortunately, not every country has the same importance as a touristic or business destination; visa-free travel to Palau is not equal to visa-free to France. There is no way around that. Some countries are much more important to travelers than others, and other Passport rankings fail to acknowledge that by maintaining the anonymity of the exact destinations by merely providing a number. This is why we index every visa-free destination with the number of international touristic arrivals. It enables us to show the real importance each destination has in international travel. But this is not the only thing that makes the STC Passport index more accurate. Other passport indexes completely forget to weight the amount of time one can stay visa-free in a jurisdiction; a visa-free stay of 7 days in Hong Kong should not carry as much weight as 6 months. We also link indexed destination to the length of authorized stay to ensure that both the importance of destination and its length of stay are accounted for in the score.
Read more: http://globalresidenceindex.com/report/
