The Grena­da gov­ern­ment has earned near­ly half a bil­lion dol­lars (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) from the Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment pro­gramme (CBI) af­ter the coun­try ap­proved 4861 new cit­i­zens for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber this year.

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

The 2024 Es­ti­mates of Rev­enue and Ex­pen­di­ture pro­ject­ed that for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber, the rev­enue from the CBI had been put at EC$280.6 mil­lion but da­ta in the Au­gust fis­cal re­port shows that the gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Au­gust was EC$372.2 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, based on the lat­est da­ta, which was re­leased on Fri­day, the gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue from the pro­gramme for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber was EC$202,394,508.11 with Sep­tem­ber earn­ings alone es­ti­mat­ed at EC$76,845,490.05.

As a re­sult, the to­tal rev­enue for the year so far stands at ap­prox­i­mate­ly EC$448.2 mil­lion ex­clu­sive of Oc­to­ber earn­ings.

One lo­cal agent said that the gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue ac­tu­al­ly crossed EC$500 mil­lion in Oc­to­ber but that the da­ta will be pub­licly re­leased in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2024.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber, Nige­ri­ans and Chi­nese na­tion­als rep­re­sent­ed 48.2 per cent of those grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship through the pro­gramme which is man­aged by the In­vest­ment Mi­gra­tion Agency (IMA).

Da­ta re­leased on the IMA web­site shows that a to­tal of 1827 peo­ple were grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship while 44 were de­nied.

Nige­ri­ans ac­cord­ing to the da­ta rep­re­sent­ed 23.8 per cent or 435 peo­ple while Chi­nese na­tion­als rep­re­sent­ed 24.4 per cent or 445 peo­ple were grant­ed cit­i­zen­ship.

The oth­er na­tion­al­i­ties re­ceiv­ing ap­proval were 90 from the Unit­ed States and 108 from Ukraine. Na­tion­als from Viet­nam, Syr­ia, Ar­me­nia, Turkey, In­dia, Lebanon, Iraq and South Africa al­so re­ceived cit­i­zen­ship.

ST. GEORGE’S, Grena­da, Nov 1, CMC

CMC/ls/ir/2024