Antigua CIP revenues has reached $120 million as of Oct 2019 indicating a great overall performance of the citizenship by investment program
The Cabinet reported Citizenship by Investment Program (CIP) has performed well in 2019, raising $120 million dollars by October 2019. The Cabinet has a further projected year-end total of CIP receipts to be $132 million, representing a 32% increase from receipts garnered in 2018 ($100 million).
This is the latest update provided by the Antigua Government, aside from the annual report published in Dec 2018. Since the launch of the scheme to end of year 2019, Antigua has issued over 3500 passports under CIP.
Recently Antigua removed limited time offer with 50% discount, permanent, making it clear that prices wont increase in 2020,. The prices for four member family passports remain at $125,000, making it cheapest CIP for families in the Caribbean.
But Antigua continues to face serious problems from the correspondent banks, related to the receipts of CIP.
“Part of the problem that the CIP has had is the movement of funds into the jurisdiction because of correspondent banking issues,” announced Cabinet spokesman, Minister Melford Nicholas
De-risking is a major problem with caribbean countries running CIPs in the region. Global banks have been limiting correspondent banking relationships with local banks in emerging and developing economies to reduce regulatory risks. the process of de-risking which has led to a withdrawal of relations by some U.S. banks from Caribbean banks, poses a serious threat to the region’s welfare, including its capacity to import goods from the U.S., which totalled over US$13 billion last year, and is set to exceed this figure this year.
Representatives of the government of the 15-nation Caribbean Community (CARICOM) had a fully attended Roundtable meeting on Tuesday November 19 with members of the U.S. Congress and senior representatives of major U.S. banks, concerning the effects of de-risking and the withdrawal of correspondent banking relations (CBRs).
“The Roundtable reached joint conclusions that the problem has to be tackled urgently and at several levels. All participating groups at the meeting resolved to work on solutions that arose from the discussion.” said a statement released by PM office.
Antigua explored the use of cryptocurrencies for CIP last year, but the implementation is still in the pipeline.
Antigua is already in the process of upgrading passport technologies fully to e-passports by Jun 2020 replacing all machine readable passports.
