by STAFF WRITER
JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The Antigua and Barbuda government has reduced by 50 percent, the cost for citizenship under the island’s Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) amid concern that the programme has been performing poorly so far this year.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne told legislators that as a result, the cost for citizenship had been reduced to US$100,000.
He acknowledged that over the last two months, the CIP had been doing poorly with only been three applications received by the authorities.
Caribbean countries, including Dominica, Grenada and St. Kitts-Nevis have engaged in the controversial CIP as a means of attracting investments to their countries. Under the programme, a foreign investor is afforded citizenship in return for making significant investment in the socio-economic development of those countries.
Browne told legislators that Dominica and other countries have been doing extremely well with an option price at US$100,000 and that Antigua and Barbuda will join the new pricing scheme.
He said Dominica, for instance, had been attracting investments of EC$50 million (one EC dollar =US$0.37 cents) monthly and that for Antigua and Barbuda, the real estate option will remain priced at US $400,000 and the Business investment option will remain at US$ 1.5 million.
Browne said the 50 percent price reduction for citizenship is necessary to earn revenue to rebuild Barbuda that was battered by Hurricane Irma when it made its way through the Lesser Antilles last month.
St. Kitts and Nevis recently reduced the price for its citizenship by creating a Hurricane Relief Fund under its CIP where an applicant can get citizenship for US$150, 000.
Meanwhile, the leader of the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP), Harold Lovell, is calling on the government to halt and rebrand the existing CIP programme.
“Look at the areas where you’ve made mistakes and do everything possible to regain visa-free access to Canada. We will soon hear that they are selling citizenship for US $20,000. What will we say then? It will be the destruction of the programme,” Lovell, a former finance minister here told the OBSERVER media.
He said the loss of visa-free access to Canada was “because of reckless actions by the government” that put the CIP “in dire straits.”
