Retiring to Grenada
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Saint Lucia 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 Saint Lucia to Grenada · Residency as a retiree
There is no retirement programme and no pensioner visa. A retiree uses the same permit of permanent residence as everyone else, with the same two conditions and no income test. What Grenada does have, and does not advertise, is a retirement provision in its tax law: section 25(1)(y) of the Income Tax Act exempts income from a source outside Grenada accruing to a retired individual who was not resident here before retiring. Since section 8 already keeps foreign income outside the charge for everybody, that exemption is belt and braces - but it is the only place in Grenadian law where the word retirement does any work for an incomer, and it is written for a person who retires to Grenada rather than in it.
At a glance
- Retirement residence programme
- None
Nothing in the Immigration Act, its subsidiary legislation or any amending Act creates a pensioner or retiree category. Belize, by contrast, has a statutory retirement incentives programme with an age and an income test.
- Minimum age
- None
No age appears in section 24 or in the Fee for Permanent Residence Regulations.
- Minimum pension
- None
Section 24(1) of the Immigration Act, quoted here, is the route a retiree uses and it is the route anyone else uses; no figure appears in it. The pension provisions quoted beside it are exemptions in the Income Tax Act, not conditions of entry.
- Foreign income of a retiree
- Exempt
Section 25(1)(y) of the Income Tax Act, for a retired individual who was not resident in Grenada before retiring.
- Pension income generally
- Exempt
Paragraphs (gg) and (hh) of section 25(1), inserted by Act 1 of 2017 with effect from 1 January 2017, exempt approved pension fund income and employment pensions and lump sums without any residence condition.
- Social security contributions after 60
- Not insurable
Section 24(1)(a) of the National Insurance Act insures persons between sixteen and sixty. The employer's rate for an employee over sixty is 1 per cent and the employee's is nil under the Collection of Contributions Regulations as printed.
Requirements
- The permit of permanent residence under section 24 of the Immigration Act: good character and a stated intention to live here permanently
- The fee of EC$1,000 for a CARICOM or Cuban citizen, EC$5,000 for anyone else
- Nothing about age, pension size, health insurance or proof of funds appears in the Act or in any regulation we read
- For the tax exemption in section 25(1)(y), not having been resident in Grenada before retirement
In detail
A pensioner route by absence rather than by design
The reason Grenada has no retirement visa is that it does not need one to achieve the result those visas are designed for. A retirement programme elsewhere typically offers three things: a residence status, an exemption for foreign pension income, and a concession on importing household effects. Grenada's permanent residence permit asks for nothing a retiree would struggle to meet, its income tax does not reach foreign income at all, and its customs law offers the ordinary traveller's allowances to everybody. There is no programme because there is nothing left for a programme to give, except a brand.
Two exemptions that do the same job twice
Section 25 of the Income Tax Act lists the exempt incomes, and paragraph (y) exempts foreign-source income of a person who retires to Grenada having not been resident here before. On any reading of section 8 that income was never assessable in the first place, because a resident's assessable income is confined to sources in Grenada. We have not found an explanation for the duplication and do not offer one. What matters for a reader is that two independent provisions reach the same answer, which is a stronger position than resting on either.
Where pension income is taxed
The 2017 amendment is about Grenadian pensions rather than foreign ones. It exempts income from an approved pension fund and, more broadly, any income accruing to a person as a result of their years of employment by way of pension or lump sum. That matters to someone who works in Grenada and then retires here, and it is one of the few genuinely generous features of a tax system whose headline rate on employment income is twenty-eight per cent.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Saint Lucia
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
«any income accruing from a source outside Grenada to any retired individual who, prior to his or her retirement, was not resident in Grenada;»The condition is about residence before retirement, not about nationality or about where the pension is paid from. A Grenadian who worked abroad all their life and retires home is within it; one who retired here and then moved abroad and back is not.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«“(gg) any pension income payable to a member of an approved pension fund in accordance with section 48; and»Deemed in force from 1 January 2017. Paragraph (hh) adds any income accrued as a result of years of employment by way of pension or a lump sum payment, which is wider and carries no fund-approval condition.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(a) where the person is a resident, all amounts ascertained in accordance with Part V, accrued directly or indirectly from all sources in Grenada; and»This is why the retiree exemption is largely redundant: foreign income of a resident is outside the charge before any exemption is reached. We record the tension rather than resolve it.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Minister may grant a permit of permanent residence to any person who applies for the same in the prescribed manner and who—»The route a retiree uses, identical to the route anyone else uses.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«(a) is between the ages of sixteen and sixty;»The upper age for compulsory insurance. A retiree moving to Grenada will not be building a Grenadian pension entitlement from employment after sixty.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The claim that Grenada has no retirement programme rests on the Immigration Act and its subsidiary legislation, on the four Immigration amending Acts of 2012 to 2021, and on a review of the titles of every Act and Statutory Rule and Order published on the law portal for 2011 to 2026. No instrument of that kind appeared. It is possible that an unpublished administrative scheme exists; nothing we read refers to one.
Section 25(2) of the Income Tax Act lets the Minister add to, delete or vary the exemptions by Order. We did not find an Order touching paragraph (y), but the exemption list is amendable without an Act and should be re-read when a budget moves.
Nothing in the law requires a retiree to hold health insurance, and nothing entitles them to free public treatment either. A person who is not a citizen and has been in Grenada less than three months, or is not in local employment, pays the hospital fee schedule increased by one-third. See the healthcare record.
There is no customs concession for a retiree's household effects in anything we read. The Customs Duties Act incorporates the Common External Tariff including its Conditional Duty Exemptions by reference only, and that document is not published on the law portal.
- consolidatesIncome Tax Act, Chapter 149, Continuous Revised Edition of the Laws of Grenada 2010
Laws of Grenada · consolidated to 2010
About this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesIncome Tax (Amendment) Act, 2017 (Act No. 1 of 2017)
Laws of Grenada
About this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesImmigration Act, Chapter 145, Continuous Revised Edition of the Laws of Grenada 2010
Laws of Grenada · consolidated to 2010
About this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- consolidatesNational Insurance Act, Chapter 205, Continuous Revised Edition of the Laws of Grenada 2010
Laws of Grenada · consolidated to 2010
About this source
The Government of Grenada's law portal. Publishes the Continuous Revised Edition of 2010 arranged by Chapter, each Chapter printing the Act with its subsidiary legislation, and separately a year-by-year run of Acts and Statutory Rules and Orders as enacted from 2011.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: A Chapter must never be cited for what the law is now, and nothing on the page says so: the Immigration Chapter is amended only to 2007 and lacks the OECS indefinite stay and the Schengen visa waiver; the Citizenship Chapter stops at 2002 and shows section 5A as repealed when an Act of 2016 has since filled it; the Income Tax Chapter prints 30 per cent when three Orders have made it 28 and 10; the Banking Chapter is an Act repealed in 2015. Subsidiary legislation printed inside a Chapter is equally frozen - the CARICOM skills Qualifications Order is shown as amended to 2008 and the 2015 amendment that added artisans and domestic workers is invisible. It must also not be cited for completeness after 2025: the 2026 collections hold five Acts and three instruments, and an amendment the investment agency publicly relied on in August 2026 is in neither. The Citizenship by Investment Act is not in the revised edition at all and has no consolidated text anywhere. Year listings paginate twenty at a time, so reading only the first page loses instruments.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source