ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—Less than 600 applications are expected to be submitted to the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) for processing in 2025 because Grenada has decided to stop accepting Russians into the program.
“2024 has been a very successful year surpassing 2023 because of the conclusion and backlogging of the Russian applications,” said Richard Duncan, Chairman of the CBI Committee.
Speaking at the conclusion of a site inspection/visit to five CBI tourism-related projects units, he said the applications will now reflect the amount received before the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war, which began in 2022.
Within weeks of the Russia/Ukraine war, Grenada suspended applications from Russia and Belarus, but the suspension was lifted shortly after, and Grenada became the only country in the OECS with CBI programs to accept Russian applications.
“We always like to tell people that 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 after the site visits.
Held earlier in December, the visit gave Members of the CBI Committee, the management team at the CBI office, and the media an opportunity to observe the level of work being done at each site.
Following the Ukraine war, Grenada received hundreds of Russian applications to the program. Between July 2022 and September 2024, more than 10000 people were approved for the program.
This resulted in the government earning approximately EC$900 million.
Data from the Citizenship by Investment Unit, recently rebranded as the Investment Migration Agency, revealed that from January to September 2024, the cabinet approved 4861, 4764 from January to December 2023, and 714 from July to December 2022.
The total from July 2022 to September 2024 stands at 10,339.
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