Grena­da has earned near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) from the Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (CBI) last year, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cial fig­ures re­leased.

The au­thor­i­ties said that na­tion­als from Chi­na and Nige­ria ac­count­ed for more than 2000 of the 5,443 new cit­i­zens ap­proved in 2024.

The gov­ern­ment earned EC$472.9 mil­lion last year, but re­cent­ly, Richard Dun­can, chair­man of the CBI Com­mit­tee, said that less than 600 ap­pli­ca­tions are ex­pect­ed to be sub­mit­ted for this year be­cause of Grena­da’s de­ci­sion to stop ac­cept­ing Rus­sians to the pro­gramme.

“We al­ways like to tell peo­ple that in 2025 things will be noth­ing like 2024 or 2023. It will go back to pre-pan­dem­ic, pre-Ukraine war lev­el ap­pli­ca­tion which is about 550 per year,” he told re­porters re­cent­ly.

Grena­da was the on­ly coun­try ac­cept­ing Russ­ian ap­pli­ca­tions fol­low­ing the start of the Ukraine-Rus­sia war in 2021. In the ini­tial days of the war, Grena­da had sus­pend­ed ap­pli­ca­tions from Rus­sia, but it was soon lift­ed, and hun­dreds of ap­pli­ca­tions were sub­mit­ted and ap­proved.

Lat­est da­ta from the CBI units show that 23 per cent of 1,252 of the ap­proved new cit­i­zens were Chi­nese while 19 per cent or 1,034 were Nige­ri­ans. The da­ta al­so showed that among oth­er na­tion­als ap­proved were from Great Britain, South Africa, Benin, Pak­istan, Unit­ed States, In­dia, Viet­nam, Ukraine, Turkey and Iraq.

The Min­istry of Fi­nance said that the CBI, through which for­eign na­tion­als ac­quire cit­i­zen­ship for Grena­da in re­turn for mak­ing a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try, is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to the rev­enue of the state.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the CBI is be­hind the Cus­toms and Ex­cise and the In­land Rev­enue De­part­ment.

ST. GEORGE’S, Grena­da, Jan 24, CMC –

CMC/ls/ir/2025