St. John’s Antigua : Around 1,800 new citizens – 450 families – are expected to be approved within the first three years of the economic citizenship programme.
That’s according to the Citizenship by Investment Programme Taskforce (CIP) who addressed 50 members of the community at the second of three public consultations on Tuesday night at Cedar Grove Primary School.
Brian D’Orenellas spoke about the “economic impact” over the initial years of the programme.
The taskforce based its schematics on the fact that each family will have four members and include the applicant, spouse, child between the ages of 18-25 and child between the ages of 12-17.
The primary applicant, spouse and adult child will each incur US$50,000 in fees, and a teenaged child fee is US$25,000. Children between the ages of 0-12 are free.
This is a grand total of US$175,000 in application fees estimated for each family seeking economic citizenship.
However, the primary applicant would also have to either acquire US$400,000 in property, contribute US$250,000 to the National Development Fund, give US$250,000 to an approved charitable donation or businesses must invest starting at US$1.5 million.
Previously, the CIP said that there would be no cap on the number of qualified investors that could attain citizenship by investment.
Members of the taskforce continued their informational campaign, at the second of three public consultations, slated for this week.
This time, CIP member and Permanent Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Sharon Joseph, joined former panelists and taskforce members, Antigua Barbuda Investment Authority chairman Fitzmaurice Christian, ONDCP Lieutenant Colonel Edward Croft, Caribbean Development Antigua Director Gaye Hechme, businessman Brian D’Orenellas, and lawyer Radford Hill.
Joseph attempted to quell ongoing concerns, raised in the previous consultation, that due diligence would be an issue and the Antiguan and Barbudan passport would be more heavily scrutinised throughout the developed world.
“I do not have a second passport to fall back on, therefore, in helping to craft this policy, we would have ensured that the safeguards, as much as humanly possible, would have been put in place so that I won’t and we won’t be in that position,” the permanent secretary said.
According to the taskforce, Antigua & Barbuda currently has visa-free travel to over 133 different countries. Joseph said she does not expect this to change after the initiative is implemented.
“The issue of having an economic citizen by investment is not really a correlation, by itself, to the issue of the integrity of our passports or whether we can travel visa-free,” the CIP member said.
She noted that St Kitts & Nevis, which has had a citizenship by investment programme since the 1980s, currently has more visa-free countries on its roster than Antigua & Barbuda.
A new concern, broached by a businessman who has been in the country for 20 years, was whether the CIP had made accommodations for foreign investors who currently live on island and have invested in the country.
Christian said there was “no conclusion” to that issue thus far.
“I know there have been discussions in regard to grandfathering existing persons who have property in Antigua into the programme, but I do not think that we have come to a conclusion about a specific policy,” Christian said.
The programme is expected to yield government EC$550 million by the end of the third year of operation.
The final consultation took place at All Saints Primary School last night. An interactive broadcast will be carried live on ABS Television this evening at 8:30 pm.
You must be logged in to post a comment.