Ajman, United Arab
Emirates - "Buy villa in UAE, get
family citizenship in Antigua & Barbuda," the advertisements scream.
It may seem a strange
proposition, but for the majority of the United Arab Emirates' population - who
enjoy visa-free travel to only a few dozen countries - attaining a passport
with fewer visa restrictions is an attractive idea.
Passports issued by
Antigua and Barbuda, a twin-island nation in the Caribbean, allow one to travel
to 132 countries visa-free or visa-on-arrival, including the UK and Canada. In
comparison, an Indian passport enables that ease of access to just 52
countries; for Emirati passports, the number is 77.
A Henley &
Partners report issued last year ranks the Antiguan and Barbudan passport 24th
worldwide in terms of visa restrictions.
Now, for the sum of
"just" 1.4m Emirati dirhams ($380,000), UAE property developers SweetHomes will sell a two-bedroom villa in Ajman and
include complementary Antigua and Barbuda passports for the buyer, his or her
spouse, dependent children and parents over the age of 65.
The Ajman-based
developer, whose offer applies to 600 units within the 1,500-villa Ajman Uptown
development, signed an implementation agreement with the Antiguan and Barbudan
government last November, and has begun to aggressively promote the deal.
"Ajman Uptown is
the first project of its kind in the GCC region that allows the buyers … to be
eligible for citizenship, subject to due diligence and approval from the
government of Antigua and Barbuda," Sweet Homes CEO Fahad Dero told Al
Jazeera.
Those who qualify for
the scheme never even have to set foot in the tiny Caribbean nation, which is
home to just over 90,000 people. Tourism has long been Antigua and Barbuda's
major export, accounting for 63 percent of the country's approximately $1.2bn gross
domestic product (GDP) in 2013. According to the World Travel and Tourism
Council, Antigua and Barbuda ranks sixth in the world in terms of the tourism
sector's contribution to GDP.
But with competition from
a slew of other island resort destinations, tourism has slowed. That, combined
with the fallout from an awkward relationship with the collapsed Stanford
Financial Group, has meant that Antigua and Barbuda has had to become inventive
in its capital-raising.
"On coming to
power, the newly elected government of Antigua and Barbuda realised that it had
been left in a precarious financial position," explained Henley &
Partners' Caribbean managing partner, Christopher Willis. "To fill the
many critical budgetary gaps, it has been aggressively creative in finding new
sources of revenue."
Henley & Partners
designed the country's Citizenship-by-Investment Programme (CIP) under government
mandate in 2013, he said. "It was one of the tools available, and to
jump-start investment in the programme the government experimented with ways to
increase applications,like offering economic citizenship as an incentive to
potential investors in other projects, such as the Ajman development."
