Budget 2016-2017 Excerpt: CBIP

2016-2017 Budget Statement Excerpt

Citizenship By Investment Programme

Madam Speaker, the Citizenship By Investment Programme has become an important non-tax revenue earner for the State and I therefore wish to restate a few facts about the Programme.

It is under this Government that a separate Unit of Government was established to strengthen the governance structure for the administration of the programme. Previously, the Citizenship By Investment Programme or its predecessor the Economic Citizenship Programme, was administered through the Financial Services Unit.

It is under this Government that a decision was made to identify separately the projects on the PSIP which are funded from resources raised under the programme. These projects are given a code of 115 in the printed estimates and are easy to reference. Government’s contribution to the financing of a number of major development projects has come from the Citizenship By Investment Programme. This includes the geothermal development project, the counterpart financing for Lots 1 and 2 Canefield to Melville Hall project and in more recent times, many of the post tropical storm Erika rehabilitation works, including the rehabilitation of Douglas Charles airport.

It is under this Government that greater structure was given to the programme, by defining clearly the two streams of the Programme; one by which resources will be raised to finance the public sector investment programme and the other by which foreign direct investment is targeted for private sector investment.

It is under this Government that we have expanded the Programme and employed a marketing strategy aimed at attracting the best and most credible applicants.

And it is under this Government that we have increased our revenue earnings to over 200 million in the last financial year.

Madam Speaker, we may ask the question ‘why is the Citizenship By Investment Programme so important?’ The response is clear; In an age where development finance is dwindling and the process of gaining access to available financing is becoming more onerous, Governments the world over must find credible ways and means of raising financing for development programmes. The alternative would be to increase domestic taxes and or contract loans.

Dominica is not the only country implementing a Citizenship By Investment Programme; and it is not the only developing country which has introduced such a programme. The United States of America, the world’s largest economy has its own programme. The United Kingdom, Malta, Cyprus and many other countries have programmes of their own.

In the last fiscal year, every effort was made to increase the revenues earned from the Citizenship By Investment Programme. In that regard, members of the Government at both the policy and technical levels, participated in several conferences around the world, particularly in the Middle East, Europe, North America and Asia, to promote the Programme.

Madam Speaker, the resources from the Citizenship By Investment Programme are deposited with the National Bank of Dominica (NBD) and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). The only signatories to these accounts are the Financial Secretary, Budget Controller, the Accountant General and the Senior Examiner and Corporate Services Officer in the Citizenship By Investment Unit. Drawdown from the bank accounts must be done by two of the officers so that no one officer can undertake any transaction on his or her own.

The account at the NBD had a balance of $2.4 million at end June 2015 and a balance of $19.1 million at end June 2016. Inflow for the fiscal year 2015/16 was $118.0 million.

The account at the RBC had a balance of $13.0 million at end June 2015. The balance at the end of June 2016 was $143.2 million. Inflow for the fiscal year 2015/16 was $161.8 million.

Full text at: http://www.opm.gov.dm/?p=1753