ST. VINCENT-Government and Opposition at Odds over CBI program

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC—The ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) and the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) are at odds over the use of the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CBI) to attract foreign investment to the country.

Under the CBI, foreign investors are granted citizenship in return for making a substantial investment in the country’s socio-economic development.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves says St. Vincent and the Grenadines will not join the other Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), namely Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts-Nevis, and St. Lucia, in implementing a CBI program here.

Gonsalves has cited a ruling by the European Union’s top court against the CBI, noting that the NDP used to cite the CBI programs in EU nations, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and Malta.

“I explained my opposition and the government’s opposition to selling passports and selling citizenship. First of all, it’s wrong in principle,” Gonsalves said, reiterating that citizenship is the highest office in the country.

“The highest office in the land can’t be for sale. And the passport is the outward sign of the inward grace of citizenship, and that, too, is not a commodity for sale,” Gonsalves said, noting that the CBI is “reckless, not sustainable, because … the countries you’d want to go — Canada, Britain, United States, and Europe — they’re going to be closing their doors on it.

“All the signs are there, and it’s reckless to run your government on passport money and citizenship money.”

But the opposition candidate for the upcoming general elections, Dr. Kishore Shallow, the current president of Cricket West Indies, has, as the NDP has publicly done before, endorsed the CBI, saying that if Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves does not know how to implement such a program, he should get out of the way of those who can.

Shallow said that he attended an investment summit in Antigua in April, at which the leaders of the four OECS countries with a CBI program spoke about the benefits to their economies.

“Now, because you are out of ideas, it doesn’t mean that the New Democratic Party doesn’t have ideas,” said Shallow, who is making his first bid to become the representative for the North Leeward constituency.

“It doesn’t mean that this distinguished team under (Opposition Leader) Dr. Godwin Friday cannot develop creative ideas and show these people how to govern and advance a state.”

Shallow said the New Democratic Party (NDP) does not have to reinvent the wheel.

“That is the beautiful thing about getting into administration at this time; because we are going to come in very humbly, and we are going to look at those best practices, some we have already accepted and adopted to an extent, and we are going to show how they could add value to our country.”

“Now, because of the fellow, the old clown, and that is what I am referring to him (as) from now on because he doesn’t understand citizens by investment, he refused to implement it.

“But as one of his colleagues, a regional leader, said to me, “Because he has his form of citizenship by investment program, he won’t want to structure it’,” Shallow said.

Prime Minister Gonsalves insists that the CBI is “wrong in practice” and suggests that a country would want to make so much money from the program that it would be sloppy with the background checks on applicants.

“Then their children get citizenship, and they go to see if they can exercise political control. Because you can’t stop them from voting,” Gonsalves said, noting that the NDP would point to US President Donald Trump’s Green Card investment program.

“The NDP here said, ‘Look, Trump is selling US$5 million Green Cards. But he said that this ain’t citizenship. It might be a path to get you to citizenship, where you have to have your number of years and so on, and we see what’s happening to people even with Green Cards.”

In the ruling, the European Court of Justice ordered Malta to close its golden passport program, saying it violates European Union law. The court ruled that the program “amounts to the commercialization of the grant of the nationality of a member state and by extension that of union citizenship.”

“What did I tell you? Can’t you commercialize it? It’s not a commodity for sale. I ain’t need a European Union judge to tell me that. I know we would have come to this,” Gonsalves said.

“And meanwhile, they look at the pot of goal at the end of the citizenship, selling passports and citizenship. They look at the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. It’s a mirage: wrong in principle, wrong in practicality, not sustainable, reckless.

He said that a year and a half ago, Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda “came from one of these meetings with the European Union. … He said, ‘Ralph, comrade, this thing is ending. I’m phasing out.’

“He told me a few — about two, three weeks ago. He said his own is about 10 percent now of their revenues. So, I say, ‘Well, you ain’t doing too bad then because, two back-to-back bumper seasons for tourism, you’ve gone over the top. You make up for that because Antigua has developed a good infrastructure with the tourism industry because they’ve been in it quite a while.”

Antigua hosted the Caribbean Investment Summit 2025 from April 22 to 26, and Shallow said he and Ben Exeter, a former NDP candidate for Central Leeward, were at the investment summit in Antigua.

“And this session was so insightful. I wish every single Vincentian could have seen or participated in that session because you would have fully what we are missing out on,” Shallow said.

Shallow said there was also a presentation from the St. Kitts-Nevis Attorney General, Garth Wilkin.

“… these regional political figures spoke with great conviction about what this program has done for each of them. It was unbelievable when I stood there, sat there, listened attentively, and concluded what a wicked fellow we have leading us in St. Vincent and the Grenadines”.

Shallow said that the CBI programmer is valued at US$50 billion and that the representatives of the five OECS countries spoke about the impact of CBI on each of their countries.

“They admitted that out of the $50 billion, they are only tapping into five percent so far, five percent of $50 billion we are tapping into as a region. So, what happened to St. Vincent? We’re the worst?”

Shallow, who holds a doctorate in business administration, specializing in finance, said St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ budget has mounted to six billion dollars over the last few years (One EC dollar = 0.37 cents).

“But here we are refusing to tap into US$50 billion like our colleagues,” he added.