ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC—According to official figures, Grenada earned nearly half a billion dollars (One EC dollar = 0.37 cents) from the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CBI) last year.
The authorities said 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. Still, Richard Duncan, chairman of the CBI Committee, recently said that less than 600 applications are expected to be submitted this year because Grenada stopped accepting Russians to the program.
“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 recently.
Following the start of the Ukraine-Russian war in 2021, Grenada was the only country accepting Russian applications. In the initial days of the war, Grenada suspended applications from Russia, but this was soon lifted, and hundreds of applications were submitted and approved.
Latest data from the CBI units show that 23 percent of the 1,252 approved new citizens were Chinese, while 19 percent, or 1,034, were Nigerians. The data also showed that among other nationals approved were those from Great Britain, South Africa, Benin, Pakistan, the United States, India, Vietnam, Ukraine, Turkey, and Iraq.
The Ministry of Finance said that the CBI, through which foreign nationals acquire citizenship in Grenada in return for making a substantial contribution to the country’s socio-economic development, is a significant contributor to the state’s revenue.
According to the ministry, the CBI is behind the Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue Department.
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