The St Lu­cia gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day said it has made sug­ges­tions to gov­ern­ments in the sub-re­gion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion with East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) with Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment pro­grammes (CBI) to fur­ther strength­en a re­gion­al agree­ment they have signed re­cent­ly.

Prime Min­is­ter Phillip J Pierre in a state­ment said that Cas­tries has pro­posed leg­isla­tive changes to ad­dress change of name re­quests and that this has been agreed to by the lead­ers of the oth­er coun­tries.

Apart from St Lu­cia, the oth­er OECS coun­tries with a CBI pro­gramme are An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, and St Kitts-Nevis.

Un­der the CBI pro­gramme, for­eign in­vestors are grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship of the coun­try in re­turn for mak­ing a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in the so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment of those coun­tries.

Pierre said that af­ter care­ful re­view and ex­ten­sive dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers and oth­er OECS lead­ers with CBI pro­grammes, St Lu­cia agreed to sign the Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment (MOA) al­ready signed by oth­er OECS CBI coun­tries. He said the MOU calls for pric­ing, in­for­ma­tion shar­ing and trans­paren­cy stan­dards, reg­u­la­tion, se­cu­ri­ty screen­ing and frame­work as well as the reg­u­la­tion, dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, amend­ment and ter­mi­na­tion.

Pierre said that the agree­ment reached in fur­ther strength­en­ing the CBI pro­grammes calls for an an­nu­al quo­ta, a net-worth for ap­pli­cants and es­crow ac­counts to be held in St Lu­cia or in the in­di­vid­ual is­lands.

He said a re­quire­ment that on­ly li­censed pro­mot­ers will be al­lowed to sub­mit ap­pli­cants to lo­cal au­tho­rised agents and these pro­mot­ers will have to sub­mit a due dili­gence re­port on each ap­pli­cant.

Pierre said over the last year, the Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment Unit here has in­sti­tut­ed all six prin­ci­ples agreed to with the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing a ban on ap­pli­cants from Rus­sians and Be­laru­sians and an op­er­a­tional re­view of the pro­gramme by an in­ter­na­tion­al con­sul­tan­cy firm which will com­mence short­ly. (CMC)