Investing Your Way into Antigua and Barbuda
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Dominica on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
81 exceptions recorded across 33 countries · none match Dominica to Antigua and Barbuda · Residency through investment
Antigua and Barbuda sells citizenship, not residence, and the distinction runs through everything. The Citizenship by Investment Act 2013 and the Regulations that sit as a Schedule to it offer four prices - US$230,000 into the National Development Fund, US$260,000 to a designated institution of higher education, US$300,000 of real estate in an approved project, or US$1.5 million in an approved business - and the successful applicant becomes a citizen rather than a resident. For an investor who wants to live here instead, the route is the permanent residence permit in section 42 of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014, whose alternative to the thirty-days-and-abode test is "a substantial economic activity in Antigua and Barbuda which is approved by the Cabinet". The Act neither defines that phrase nor puts a figure on it.
At a glance
- National Development Fund contribution
- US$230,000as of 2024-07-25
Regulation 7(1) of the Citizenship by Investment Regulations 2016 as replaced by regulation 7 of Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50. The figure the 2016 Regulations enacted was XCD 540,000 for a single applicant.
- Higher education contribution
- US$260,000 for a familyas of 2024-07-25
Regulation 6A(2) as replaced by regulation 6 of Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50. Regulation 6A was inserted in 2018 at $150,000 for a single applicant and $275,000 for a family of two.
- Real estate purchase price
- US$300,000as of 2024-07-25
Regulation 6(4) as replaced by regulation 5(a) of Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50. The 2016 Regulations set it at one million and eighty thousand dollars, which at the Eastern Caribbean dollar's fixed rate is US$400,000.
- Business investment, sole
- Four million dollars
Regulation 9(2)(a) of the 2016 Regulations, not amended by any instrument we reached. The Regulations state the sum without naming a currency; the 2024 amendment, which does name United States currency for the other options, left this one alone.
- Real estate resale restriction
- 5 years, and only onceas of 2024-07-25
Regulation 6(5), inserted by regulation 5(b) of Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50.
- Processing fee, single applicant
- US$10,000as of 2024-07-25
From the Schedule of Fees as replaced by regulation 9(a) of Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50. A family of up to four pays US$20,000 and each further member US$10,000.
- Due diligence fee, single applicant
- US$8,500as of 2024-07-25
From the same replaced Schedule of Fees. A spouse pays US$5,000, a child aged 12 to 17 US$2,000 and a child under 12 nothing.
- Permanent residence by economic activity
- "Substantial economic activity" approved by Cabinet
Section 42(2)(b) of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014. No threshold and no definition appears in the Act or in any instrument we reached.
Requirements
- For citizenship by investment: one of the four options in the Citizenship by Investment Regulations 2016 as amended, filed through a licensed Agent, never directly
- For citizenship by investment: processing fees and due diligence fees paid with the application, and the balance within thirty days of approval
- For citizenship by investment: not falling within the ineligibility grounds in regulation 10, which since 2020 turn on a sentence of more than twelve months rather than on a six-month maximum penalty
- For permanent residence as an investor: a substantial economic activity in Antigua and Barbuda approved by Cabinet, plus an annual income of not less than US$500,000
- For real estate under the programme: the property may be resold once for the programme, and not until five years have passed since it was first used under it
How the process runs
- Step 1
Engage a licensed Agent
Citizenship by Investment Unit
Regulation 4(1) of the 2016 Regulations allows an application to be submitted only by an Agent holding a licence issued by the Minister, and regulation 4(2) restricts the licence to a citizen with seven years of lawful ordinary residence.
- Step 2
File with a deposit
Citizenship by Investment Unit
Regulation 5(2)(b) requires a non-refundable deposit of ten per cent of the applicable processing fees and the full due diligence fees, with a medical certificate and a police certificate.
- Step 3
Due diligence and decision within three months
Citizenship by Investment Unit
Regulation 5(14) requires the Unit to notify the Agent within three months that the application is approved, denied, or delayed for cause. Checks run on every applicant and every dependant over eleven years of age.
- Step 4
Pay and invest within thirty days of approval
Citizenship by Investment Unit
Regulation 5(15) requires the balance of the processing fee and the investment itself within thirty days of the notification.
- Step 5
Take the oath
Antigua and Barbuda, or a mission abroad
Regulation 5(16) requires the oath or affirmation of allegiance in the form in the Third Schedule to the Citizenship Act. Since Statutory Instrument 2020 No. 85 it may be taken remotely by audio-visual link before a notary.
In detail
Where the current Regulations actually live
This is the part that catches people out. The Citizenship by Investment Unit's own legislation page lists an Act of 2013, amendment Acts of 2016 and 2018, amendment Regulations of 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, two of 2020 and one of 2024 - and no 2016 Regulations. But every amending instrument from 2017 onward defines its "principal Regulations" as the Antigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment Regulations 2016. They are not missing: they were enacted by section 5 of the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act 2016, No. 2 of 2016, which repealed the 2013 Regulations printed as the Schedule to the principal Act and substituted a new Schedule containing them. So the principal Regulations are inside an amendment Act, the Act's own Schedule is the Regulations, and the only way to read the current rules is to take the 2016 Act's Schedule and apply five later instruments to it by hand.
The amendment chain of the thresholds
Read forwards. The Citizenship by Investment Act 2013 carried the 2013 Regulations as its Schedule, with real estate at $1,080,000, the National Development Fund at $675,000 and a business investment at $4,000,000, all in Eastern Caribbean dollars and none of them saying so. Section 5 of Act 2 of 2016 repealed that Schedule and substituted the 2016 Regulations, which kept $1,080,000 for real estate and $4,000,000 for business but split the Fund contribution into $540,000 for a single applicant or a family of up to four and $675,000 for a family of five or more. Statutory Instrument 2017 No. 76 raised the dependent-child age from twenty-six to twenty-nine and opened a limited time offer on the Fund at $270,000. Statutory Instrument 2018 No. 16 inserted regulation 6A, the higher education option, at $150,000 single and $275,000 for a family of two. Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 10 let the Unit bank outside the Eastern Caribbean, accept other currencies, and ran a two-party $200,000 offer to 31 October 2019. Statutory Instrument 2020 No. 7 narrowed the criminal-record bar. Statutory Instrument 2020 No. 85 allowed the oath by video. Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 then rewrote the prices in United States dollars - real estate US$300,000, higher education US$260,000, the Fund US$230,000 - replaced the whole Schedule of Fees, and closed every limited time offer at 11:59 p.m. on 31 July 2024.
A gap in the chain we could not close
Statutory Instrument 2019 No. 10 amends "regulation 15 - Limited Time Offer" by inserting a new subregulation (2) after subregulation (1) and renumbering the old (2) as (4). That presupposes a regulation 15 with at least two subregulations. The 2016 Regulations as enacted by Act 2 of 2016 end at regulation 14. No instrument we reached inserted regulation 15, and none of the instruments on the Unit's legislation page does it. Something between 2016 and 2019 created it and is not in the official collection. This record quotes regulation 15 only in the form Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 left it, because that is the only text of it we have read.
Country-level policy
The government's laws site carries a Revised Edition whose chapters were revised to 1992, and a separate collection of Acts and Statutory Instruments as printed year by year. The Revised Edition is where search engines land, and for immigration it is wrong: it still presents the Immigration and Passport Act, Cap. 208, as the law, although section 87(1) of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 repealed it outright. There is no consolidated edition of the 2014 Act carrying its 2015, 2021 and 2023 amendments, so the rules in force exist only as an Act plus three amending Acts applied by hand. The same shape repeats for citizenship by investment, where the current Regulations are a Schedule inside an amending Act and six Statutory Instruments have been applied to them since.
Section 42 of the Immigration and Passport Act 2014 creates a permit that is marketed as a tax arrangement and drafted as an immigration status. It asks for a permanent place of abode and thirty days a year in the country, or a substantial economic activity approved by Cabinet; it asks for an annual income of not less than US$500,000, raised from US$100,000 by the 2021 amendment; it gives the right to work without a work permit; it runs for twelve months at a time; and it requires an annual payment of prescribed fees to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. In 2021 a second limb was added: section 42A lets a holder apply for citizenship by registration after seven unbroken years of ninety days a year, substantial economic activity and tax compliance, and makes the permit issued under that section valid for ten years.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Dominica
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«An application for citizenship may be submitted by an agent on behalf of a single applicant or a family who proposes to make a contribution to the National Development Fund and where that contribution is in the amount of Two Hundred and Thirty Thousand (US$230,000.00) dollars in United States currency.»Cite the amended Regulations: the rule in force is regulation 7(1) of the 2016 Regulations reading this way, and Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 is what put it there.
«The full purchase price of the real estate shall be at least three hundred thousand (US$300,000.00) dollars in United States currency.»This instrument is published only as an image. The wording above was read off that picture and checked by eye, so it did not pass the machine verbatim check the other quotations passed. Treat it as accurate but re-read the scan before relying on it.
«An application for Citizenship by Investment under subregulation (1) may be submitted by an Agent where the family proposes to make a contribution of two hundred and sixty thousand (US$260,000.00) dollars in United States currency to the designated institution of higher education.»The option is tied to a designated institution: regulation 6A(1) as enacted in 2018 required the Minister to designate it after consulting the education Minister and with Cabinet's approval.
«A property or interest in a property that is purchased by an applicant as satisfying the requirements of the programme under this option shall only be resold once for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of another applicant under the programme and the resale may not be validly completed for this purpose until a period of five years has passed since the property was first used under the programme.»This is separate from regulation 6(7), which deprives a citizen of citizenship for disposing of the property within five years.
«No applications based on a Limited Time Offer incentive offered by the Unit shall be accepted after the 31st July 2024 at 11:59 p.m.»The discounts that ran from 2017 onwards are closed. Any page still advertising a limited time offer is advertising something the Regulations stopped accepting.
«The full purchase price of the real estate shall be at least one million and eighty thousand dollars.»The superseded threshold, in Eastern Caribbean dollars and without the currency being named. At the fixed rate of 2.7 it is US$400,000.
«A person proposes to make an investment in an approved business of at least four million dollars on his own behalf; or»The business option. Regulation 9(2)(b) allows two or more persons to invest jointly, totalling at least thirteen and a half million dollars with each contributing at least one million and eighty thousand.
«(i) was sentenced to serve a period of imprisonment in excess of twelve (12) months; and»A real narrowing. The 2016 text barred anyone convicted of an offence for which the maximum custodial penalty exceeded six months, whether or not it was imposed; the 2020 text turns on the sentence actually served and on rehabilitation.
«(ii) was lawfully ordinarily resident in Antigua and Barbuda for a period of not less than seven years immediately before making his application for an Agent’s Licence.»An application can only be filed by a licensed Agent, and an Agent must be a citizen with seven years of residence. There is no route for an applicant to file directly.
«be engaged in a substantial economic activity in Antigua and Barbuda which is approved by the Cabinet;»The investor's alternative to the abode-and-thirty-days test for permanent residence. Nothing in the Act or in any instrument we reached says what makes an activity substantial.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The government's law site, carrying two distinct collections: chapters of a Revised Edition whose base cut-off is 1992, and Acts, Bills and Statutory Instruments as printed year by year. The Revised Edition chapters are scanned page-images with a recognition layer; the annual Acts from about 2014 are born-digital.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Revised Edition does not show repeal. It still publishes the Immigration and Passport Act as a chapter although the 2014 Act repealed it outright, with nothing on the page to say so, and that chapter is what a search engine surfaces first. It carries no later amendments either, and there is no consolidated text of any post-1992 Act, so a rule must always be cited as the section of the resulting Act naming the instrument that put it there. Its instrument collection is incomplete: the instrument that inserted one regulation of the investment rules is in neither collection. And its scans are lossy - a schedule paragraph disappears from extraction entirely and one Act loses its right margin - so a quotation from a chapter must be declared as a recognition and a negative claim must never rest on one alone.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Every threshold here is quoted from a Statutory Instrument or from the Act that enacted the Regulations, never from the Unit's brochure pages and never from an intermediary. Nothing published by a firm that sells citizenship is treated as evidence of what the law requires, however often the figures happen to be right.
The 2024 Regulations are the first instrument in the chain to name a currency. Every earlier figure - $1,080,000, $540,000, $4,000,000, $150,000 - is written as bare dollars. The Eastern Caribbean dollar is fixed at 2.7 to the United States dollar, so XCD 1,080,000 is US$400,000 and the 2024 real estate price of US$300,000 is a real reduction, but the record does not convert the business threshold of four million dollars because the instrument does not say which dollars they are and the 2024 instrument, which names the currency for the other three options, left this one untouched.
The business investment option was not amended by Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50. If a page quotes US$1,500,000 for it, that is an arithmetic conversion of the four million Eastern Caribbean dollars in regulation 9(2)(a), not a figure any instrument states.
The stored reading of the Citizenship by Investment Act 2013 as the Unit publishes it carries, on its second page, a block of Chinese-language accounting table text that the Act plainly does not contain. It is an extraction artefact of a scanned document, it sits more than a thousand characters away from anything quoted here, and no quotation on any record of ours comes from near it. It is recorded because a reader checking our source should know what they will find there.
Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50 is dated in the stored reading as "MADE this 2 5th day of" with the month lost in the scan. The Unit publishes it in a folder dated August 2024 and the instrument closes the limited time offers at 31 July 2024, so it was made after that date; this record uses 25 July 2024 for nothing and dates the figures by the instrument's own cut-off rather than by its signature.
The Citizenship by Investment Board established by sections 2A to 2C, inserted by the Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act 2018, No. 10 of 2018, is an advisory body to the Minister. The decision to register remains the Minister's, subject to the approval of Cabinet, under section 3(2)(a) of the 2013 Act.
- administersAntigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Regulations 2024, Statutory Instrument 2024 No. 50
Citizenship by Investment Unit (Antigua and Barbuda)
About this source
The statutory unit administering the investment programme, and the only public home of several instruments amending the Regulations, including the one that sets the thresholds in force.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: Its legislation page lists every amending instrument and not the principal Regulations, which are a Schedule substituted into the Act by an amending Act of 2016 - so the law in force is assembled from a Schedule inside an Act the page does not name. It also omits whatever instrument inserted one of the regulations its own amendments refer to. Everything it hosts is a page-image scan, and the stored reading of the principal Act carries fabricated text on its second page. Its brochure, FAQ and fee pages must never be cited for a legal requirement - only the instruments it hosts.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- administersAntigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Act, 2016, No. 2 of 2016, with the Citizenship by Investment Regulations 2016 as its substituted Schedule
Citizenship by Investment Unit (Antigua and Barbuda)
About this source
The statutory unit administering the investment programme, and the only public home of several instruments amending the Regulations, including the one that sets the thresholds in force.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: Its legislation page lists every amending instrument and not the principal Regulations, which are a Schedule substituted into the Act by an amending Act of 2016 - so the law in force is assembled from a Schedule inside an Act the page does not name. It also omits whatever instrument inserted one of the regulations its own amendments refer to. Everything it hosts is a page-image scan, and the stored reading of the principal Act carries fabricated text on its second page. Its brochure, FAQ and fee pages must never be cited for a legal requirement - only the instruments it hosts.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- administersAntigua and Barbuda Citizenship by Investment (Amendment) Regulations, 2020, Statutory Instrument 2020 No. 7
Citizenship by Investment Unit (Antigua and Barbuda)
About this source
The statutory unit administering the investment programme, and the only public home of several instruments amending the Regulations, including the one that sets the thresholds in force.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: Its legislation page lists every amending instrument and not the principal Regulations, which are a Schedule substituted into the Act by an amending Act of 2016 - so the law in force is assembled from a Schedule inside an Act the page does not name. It also omits whatever instrument inserted one of the regulations its own amendments refer to. Everything it hosts is a page-image scan, and the stored reading of the principal Act carries fabricated text on its second page. Its brochure, FAQ and fee pages must never be cited for a legal requirement - only the instruments it hosts.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
- consolidatesImmigration and Passport Act, 2014, No. 6 of 2014
Laws of Antigua and Barbuda
About this source
The government's law site, carrying two distinct collections: chapters of a Revised Edition whose base cut-off is 1992, and Acts, Bills and Statutory Instruments as printed year by year. The Revised Edition chapters are scanned page-images with a recognition layer; the annual Acts from about 2014 are born-digital.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: The Revised Edition does not show repeal. It still publishes the Immigration and Passport Act as a chapter although the 2014 Act repealed it outright, with nothing on the page to say so, and that chapter is what a search engine surfaces first. It carries no later amendments either, and there is no consolidated text of any post-1992 Act, so a rule must always be cited as the section of the resulting Act naming the instrument that put it there. Its instrument collection is incomplete: the instrument that inserted one regulation of the investment rules is in neither collection. And its scans are lossy - a schedule paragraph disappears from extraction entirely and one Act loses its right margin - so a quotation from a chapter must be declared as a recognition and a negative claim must never rest on one alone.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source