What Caribbean citizenship actually costs from India

Five programmes, one recent agreement

Five Eastern Caribbean states run citizenship-by-investment programmes: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Lucia. Each offers a non-refundable contribution to a national fund, and most offer an approved real-estate route as an alternative.

In 2024 the five signed a Memorandum of Agreement among themselves, under a process convened with the United States, that set a regional minimum price of US$200,000 from 1 July 2024. The effect was to end most of the undercutting that had driven prices down for years.

So a figure you were quoted two years ago may not be available today. The published minimum contributions are Grenada USD 150,000 (National Transformation Fund, single applicant), Dominica USD 200,000, Antigua and Barbuda USD 230,000, Saint Lucia USD 240,000 and St Kitts and Nevis USD 250,000.

Price is no longer the differentiator it was. Processing discipline, visa-free access and diligence reputation are.

The lines nobody puts in the brochure

The contribution is the headline. Underneath it sit due-diligence fees charged per applicant above a certain age — non-refundable, and charged whether or not you are approved. Government processing fees, again per applicant. Passport issuance fees. Certificate of naturalisation fees.

Then the professional layer: an authorised local agent, which most programmes require you to use and cannot be bypassed, plus your own advisers. Document costs in India — police clearances, apostille, notarisation, translations, sworn affidavits for anything non-standard in your documentation.

And the part almost nobody costs in: getting the money out of India lawfully. That is a professional exercise in itself under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, and for a family-sized contribution it usually means structuring across individuals or financial years.

Contribution or real estate

The contribution is a payment you never see again, and that is its virtue: the cost is knowable on day one and the file is simpler.

The real-estate route has a higher headline, a mandatory holding period, and an exit that depends on finding a buyer in a small market where almost every buyer is another applicant doing the same thing. The resale discount is real and is rarely discussed at the point of sale.

For most Indian families the contribution is the honest choice unless there is a specific reason to want the asset. Treat any adviser pushing real estate hard as someone who may be earning from the developer, and ask them directly whether they are.

What you are actually buying

Visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a large number of countries, which for an Indian passport holder is a substantial practical change — though the specific list moves: Dominica and Saint Lucia nationals now need a visa for the UK, and US entry is partially suspended for Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica.

A second nationality that can be passed to children, a base outside India for tax and succession planning that must be structured properly with Indian advice, and a document that continues to function if something disrupts your primary one.

What you are not buying is the right to live and work in Europe, and any presentation that implies otherwise is misrepresenting the product. Check the current visa-free list yourself rather than accepting a brochure map, because those maps date quickly.

Verify the visa-free list against a current source on the day you decide. It is the thing most likely to have changed since the brochure was printed.

The diligence that gets people refused

These programmes decline applicants, and a refusal costs you the due-diligence fees with nothing to show. The common causes are not exotic: an undisclosed prior visa refusal, a source of funds that cannot be traced to a lawful origin with documents, a business interest not declared, or an inconsistency between what was declared and what the diligence firm found.

Disclose everything, early, to your own adviser. A refusal you mentioned upfront is a fact to be explained. The same refusal discovered by a diligence firm is a credibility problem, and credibility problems are what actually end these applications.

Also check that the programme itself is in good standing at the moment you apply. These have been under international scrutiny and terms have shifted; that is a live variable, not a historical one.

Common questions