By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Minnis administration presently has no plans to look at implementing an investor citizenship programme, Immigration and Financial Services Minister Brent Symonette said yesterday.

Mr Symonette, who also has ministerial responsibility for trade and industry told The Tribune he was however keen on ensuring that permanent residency applications are ‘expedited’.

"One of the things we're doing with regard to Financial Services, and myself by being in the same ministry, is making sure persons who apply for permanent residency and anything on the Immigration side under the Financial Services Act, are dealt with more expeditiously," he said.

"The bankers and high net worth people with second homes, we want to ensure that those are dealt with on an expedited basis while still trying to get the backlog through.”

On the issue of looking at an investor citizenship programme as a means of attracting financial services business and investors, Mr Symonette said: “We have no plans of that at the moment. We're going to look at the whole question of permanent residency first. I think one of our Caribbean countries recently went that route and had some problems with another country and visas. There is no plan to do that at the moment."

So-called ‘Investor Citizenship’ programmes have been mulled and floated in the past most recently by Sean McWeeney, a former attorney general and key advisor to ex-premier Perry Christie. The idea had been ruled out however by the former administration with former financial services minister Hope Strachan stating that such a reform was “not so palatable” in the current environment.

Such an initiative would eventually grant citizenship to a limited group of individuals, once they met certain criteria, including a high multi-million dollar investment threshold.Those qualifying for such a programme would essentially have to invest in Bahamas-based developments and companies that created local jobs, but Mr McWeeney’s proposal drew a mixed reaction from the Bahamian private sector in mid-2014.

Investor citizenship programmes have been adopted by countries such as Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Malta, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain, either allowing direct citizenship by investment or offering routes to citizenship for wealthy investors. Concerns have been raised, however, over the transparency and accountability surrounding such programmes, which have also drawn the attention of regulators and law enforcement agencies in nations such as the US on the grounds that citizenship is being ‘bought’.