Dominica now emerges as the most successful and popular Citizenship by investment (CBI) program in the  world. Launched in 1993, the Dominica Citizenship by Investment program (DCBIP) is also oldest and longest running CBI schemes in the world. The demand for citizenships only picked up after 20 years of the launch.

From just 185 approved citizenships in 2013, the demand for immediate citizenships soared to 2,059 applications approved  in 2018, an increase of over 1,000%. The real estate investment route for $200,000 was introduced in 2014, since then it contributed to development of several five star hotels and luxury resorts in the island.

The latest PwC report published based on the interviews and quantitative data collected from the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica shows that Dominica has approved to 2,059 CBI applications, 1500 plus EDF and less close to 500 for real estate for the year 2018. The volume of real estate applications have tripled. The number of applications for EDF donation has remained consistently close to 1500 mark during the past three years from 2016 to 2018.

This is the only official report published by the Government of Dominica on the number of applications approved, making the CBI scheme more transparent.

With a simple calculation on applications, Dominica has received US$150m from EDF fund and another US$100m from real estate investment making total CBI receipts of US$250m from 2018 alone.  It is estimated that 52% of revenues for the Dominica Government come from DCBIP.

The popularity of DCBIP scheme took a big leap from 2016, after Dominica signed a mutual schengen visa-waiver agreement with the European Union on 28 May 2015 which was ratified on 15 December 2015. The number of applications nearly tripled from 2015 to 2016 (you will see in the graph below). As of 2019, Dominica had visa free access to 135 countries. Recently the country signed visa waiver with Russia.

Dominica has a history of being pummeled by hurricanes. In 2014, Tropical storm Erika wiped out 90% of the GDP of the island, and in 2016, Hurricane Maria struck a catastrophic damage wiping out 226% of Dominica’s GDP, according to IMF.

The CBI funds Dominica had for recovery efforts were three and half times higher than the international aid received. The damage led to negative GDP growth for Dominica. Since then Dominica has been campaigning for climate change and pledged to ‘build back better’ and becoming the first climate-resilient country in the world.

Dominica has turned around the entire economy from negative growth to highest positive growth with the help of CBI program, in just a year.

The DCBIP played a very important role in recovery efforts of the island to quickly return to positive growth of the economy. In the ECLAC report of the UN agency,  said Dominica is projected to achieve hightest GDP growth in 2019 by 9.9% in the Caribbean region. The public debt of Dominica also remains relatively low at 65% the report said further.

How Dominica used the CBI funds

Besides using the CBI funds for recovery efforts, the small island of Dominica has set a great example for other countries on how to use CBI funds effectively in the social and economic development projects such as housing, healthcare, education etc..

• Hurricane recovery – 34% of CBI funds were used for recovery efforts
• Housing – 30% of CBI funds used for housing in construction of homes for 6,680 households over 15 sites in Dominica funded by EDF
• Transport: 8.2% of CBI funds for Build/repair over 15 sections of damaged roads in Dominica and 19 bridges that were damaged by Hurricane Maria.
• EC$110 million of expenditure on river dredging and other river protection measures, such as building river walls and river training.
• EC$6 million was allocated to the construction of a 7MW geothermal power plant.
• Marigot hospital with state of the art facility with 75 beds and 40,00 sqft capacity to be completed next year partly funded by DCBIP
• US$26 million have been distributed for education, entirely from CBI, for students studying overseas in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Tourism Hotels

The CBI program fueled the development of five star hotels and resorts to cater the tourism sector of Dominica. These hotels are in construction

• Cabrits Resort & Spa Kempinski is a luxury 161-room hotel located next to the town of Portsmouth in the north of Dominica. Set to open in Autumn 2019, the resort includes a spa, three restaurants and tennis courts.
• Anichi Resort is a luxury hotel just south of Portsmouth with 201 rooms available, two swimming pools and a spa. Estimated completion end of 2020.
• Tranquility Beach Resort, set to be completed by 2021, offers a mix of condos, villas, cliffhanger suites and penthouses, for a total of 73 rooms overlooking the ocean.
• Secret Bay Residences are a series of villas that are planned to be built by October 2021 as part of an extension of Secret Bay, a 5-star luxury hotel operating on the west coast of Dominica.
•  Jungle Bay Resort, located in the south of Dominica, recently opened to guests. The resort has small villas surrounded by Dominica’s forest, offering meditation and adventure packages. CBIP investment was used to finance the construction of the resort.

These hotels are projected to increase the stock of hotel rooms by almost 70%, adding 628 new rooms to the current stock and creating 1000 jobs in the island.

With Dominica receiving half the amount of entire country’s GDP from CBI program, no other country has wrote such a great success story in the history of citizenship by investment.