Country-wide policy
A Citizenship by Investment Portfolio With No Programme
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is the one independent member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States that does not sell citizenship. That has been true throughout the period Parliament's own record covers: no Act establishing any such programme appears among the Acts passed between 1993 and 2025, and the Constitution's citizenship chapter has no economic or honourary limb. But on 2 December 2025, after a change of government, the Governor-General assigned the subjects of the Prime Minister's office and the list ends with "Citizenship by Investment Programmes". A subject of government now exists for something that has no statute.
Topics it changes
At a glance
- Programme
- None
The Government Notice of 2 December 2025, quoted here, assigns the portfolio Citizenship by Investment Programmes to the Prime Minister. Section 94 of the Constitution leaves citizenship to Parliament, and we found no Act of Parliament establishing a programme for the portfolio to administer.
- Enabling Act
- None passed between 1993 and 2025, and none among Acts 1 to 12 of 2026
Established from the House of Assembly's year-by-year record of Acts, which begins in 1993, and from the legislation notices in every Gazette published for 2025 and 2026.
- Portfolio
- Assigned to the Prime Minister on 2 December 2025
Published in the Gazette of 30 December 2025 and repeated in the assignment of 19 February 2026, published 3 March 2026.
- Constitutional route if one were created
- Section 94 of the Constitution
Parliament may provide for the acquisition of citizenship by persons not eligible under the citizenship chapter. It is a power, and it has not been used for this.
- What to watch
- A Bill in the House of Assembly and the Gazette's weekly legislation notice
Why this is worth a page of its own
An absence established from the law is one of the more useful things this site can publish, and this one is usually asserted from commentary. It rests here on two readings: the Constitution's citizenship chapter, sections 90 to 95, which provides for birth, descent, marriage, residence by a Commonwealth citizen and children and nothing else, and leaves anything further to Parliament by section 94; and the House of Assembly's published record of every Act passed from 1993 to 2025, which records four amendments to the Citizenship Act and no programme of any kind. The 2025 and 2026 Gazettes, which list every Act and statutory rule and order published in those two years, add nothing.
And why it should not be read as permanent
A general election was held in November 2025 and a new government took office. On 2 December the Governor-General assigned the Prime Minister his subjects, and the Schedule - Prime Minister's Office, Cabinet Secretariat, citizenship, residency, work permits, alien's landholding licences, through finance and the law courts to the Government Printery - ends with "Citizenship by Investment Programmes". The plural is the Government's. A portfolio is not a programme and creates no route for anyone, but it is the administrative step that would precede one.
What the law says
«Citizenship by Investment Programmes»The final subject in the Schedule, after the Government Printery.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The State's gazette, published weekly and archived online from 2016. Each issue opens with a Legislations notice naming every Act and every Statutory Rule and Order published that week, and carries Governor-General's notices, including the assignment of departments and subjects to each Minister under section 53 of the Constitution. It is the authoritative record that an instrument exists and of the date it was published.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must never be cited for the content of an Act or a Statutory Rule and Order. The notice says in terms that the instruments 'can be purchased at the Government Printing Office, Campden Park Industrial Estate' - the issue announces them and does not contain them. A handful of Statutory Rules and Orders are posted as separate PDFs beside the 2026 issues; most are not. It must also not be cited for anything before 2016, which is where the online archive starts. File names are not a reliable guide to contents: the file named Gazette_No50_2025.pdf contains issue No. 40 of 30 July 2025.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«GIVEN under my hand and the Public Seal of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines at Kingstown this
2nd day of December, 2025.»The date the assignment was made. It was published four weeks later.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The State's gazette, published weekly and archived online from 2016. Each issue opens with a Legislations notice naming every Act and every Statutory Rule and Order published that week, and carries Governor-General's notices, including the assignment of departments and subjects to each Minister under section 53 of the Constitution. It is the authoritative record that an instrument exists and of the date it was published.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must never be cited for the content of an Act or a Statutory Rule and Order. The notice says in terms that the instruments 'can be purchased at the Government Printing Office, Campden Park Industrial Estate' - the issue announces them and does not contain them. A handful of Statutory Rules and Orders are posted as separate PDFs beside the 2026 issues; most are not. It must also not be cited for anything before 2016, which is where the online archive starts. File names are not a reliable guide to contents: the file named Gazette_No50_2025.pdf contains issue No. 40 of 30 July 2025.
We re-read it every 30 days. More about this source
«94. There shall be such provision as may be made by Parliament
for-
(a) the acquisition of citizenship by persons who are not
eligible or who are no longer eligible to become citizens
under the provisions of this Chapter:»The only door. It is addressed to Parliament and confers nothing by itself.
Practical notes
Parliament's published record of Acts begins in 1993. An economic citizenship provision enacted or repealed before then would not appear in it, and the Citizenship Act, Chapter 117, has not been read.
Nothing here says a programme is coming. What it says is that the subject has been assigned to a minister and that no statute exists. Both of those are facts about the assignment of 2 December 2025, gazetted on 30 December, and should be rechecked against the Gazette's weekly legislation notice. Whether an earlier administration's assignment carried the same subject is not something we have read.