The twin island of St Christopher (St Kitts) and Nevis, which is the birthplace of citizenship by investment industry in 1983 has the biggest sovereign citizenship fund in the world, closely followed by Malta.
A Sovereign citizenship fund (SCF) is a model of sovereign wealth fund generated from the revenue of citizenship by investment schemes. We have coined the world ‘citizenship fund’ because the revenues are generated from citizenship contributions, fees and other costs. The pot of funds are used for social, economic development of the country, building homes, schools and especially disaster management.
CBI programs have donation to public fund and making one time contribution to this sovereign fund qualifies foreign investors for citizenship. About 90% of the applications are known to pursue this donation route and only 10% invest in real estate or business projects.
The other common way of raising funds from public by governments is through the issue of government securities or bonds. After usually five years the entire funds are paid back to public with specific interest rates. The only difference with sovereign fund is the money is not paid back.
We will list some of the sovereign citizenship funds from CBI revenues
CBI Country | Sovereign Citizenship Fund | Contribution (onwards) | Fund Revenues* |
St Kitts and Nevis | Sugar Industry Diversification Fund (SIDF)
Hurricane Relief Fund (HRF) Sustainable Growth Fund (SGF) |
USD 250,000
USD 150,000 USD 150,000 |
USD 630 million
USD 180 million (from 1200 applications) No figures available |
Dominica | Economic Diversification Fund (EDF) | USD 100,000 | No figures available |
Grenada | National Transformation Fund (NTF) | USD 150,000 | USD 65 million |
Vanuatu | DSP/Contribution Fund | USD 150,000 | USD 64 million (VT 7.1 billion cbi revenues). No other figures available |
Antigua and Barbuda | National Development Fund (NDF)
UWI Fund |
USD 100,000
USD 150,000 |
USD 110 million (from 1112 CBI applications)
No figures |
Malta | National Development and Social Fund (NDSF) | EUR 650,000 | EUR 624 million (from 961 approved IIP applications) |
Cyprus | No such fund exists | ||
Moldova | Public Sustainable Development Fund (PSDF) | EUR 100,000 | EUR 500 million (projected from 5000 applications) |
Montenegro | Grant Fund to be announed | EUR 100,000 | EUR 200 million (projected from 2000 applications) |
* Approximate unofficial figures