15th October 20187th May 2019 by Fabienne Malkinson

Analysis revels that an approximate 35,000 people have invested in a passport

The growth of the citizenship by investment market has been ferocious in the last few years. Existing programmes have seen dramatic rises whilst new programmes are added to the market.

With interest and demand rising, the question stands as to how many individual passports have been issued to applicants worldwide via the route of citizenship by investment? After much data exploration, Coates Global have come across remarkable results of an estimated total number of economic citizens in the world. Please note that we have not included any residency by investment permits as well as programmes that Coates Global do not offer services for.

Europe

CYPRUS

Total of 3,850 economic citizens

In February 2018, officials at the Finance Ministry informed the press that Cyprus had issued 3,300 passports under the Cyprus citizenship by investment programme. This is the most up to date data that is available, however, what we can deduce is how Cyprus has received an average of 62 economic citizens a month in the last 4 years. Due to this, we can only assume that this would be the number of applicants Cyprus continues to receive from the period between March 2018 up until today.

MALTA

Total of 2,101 economic citizens

Malta’s Individual Investor Programme (MIIP) have published detailed statistics in their annual reports by the programme’s regulator called Office of the Regulator (ORiip). In comparison to the other programmes, Malta has offered the world a most transparent review when reporting data on a year-on-year basis.

The Caribbean

DOMINICA

Total of 6-10,000 economic citizens

The difficulty when trying to establish a concrete estimate with the total amount of economic citizens in Dominica is that the country does not offer any sort of official statistical reporting on its citizenship programme. On the other hand, other sources point towards, what we can only gather as an estimated total number.

Emmanuel Nanthan, ambassador and head of Dominica’s citizenship by investment unit, stated in April this year that he was receiving between 1,500 and 2,000 applications per annum. Other factors have added to this, such as, the IMF, during their Article IV missions to the island, recorded CBI-receipts as % of GDP as well as the Prime Minister disclosing investments raised in Dominica via the programme through the annual budget address. As this information is rather theoretical and estimated on uncertain data, this leaves us with an approximate average of more than 6,000 and less than 10,000 economic citizens who have been issued their Dominican passport.

ST KITTS & NEVIS

Total of 16,544 economic citizens

Prime Minister Harris of St Kitts & Nevis stated in July 2018 that his country had a grand total of 16,544 economic citizens. St Kitts and Nevis, like Dominica, publishes no data on its programme, although the government has repeatedly promised to do so.

Total number of economic citizens in the world

At least 32,495

That is a very conservative estimate (using Dominica’s highest percentage, otherwise it would be calculated as £28,495). As some of this data has no true lead, we can only assume and hope that the mark exceed £35,000 rather merely making it an average. This goes without saying that there are numerous of other citizenship by investment programmes that are not listed as Coates Global only wish to provide carefully selected elite and prestigious of programmes.