Is the Vanuatu CIIP Still Open?

The Vanuatu CIIP, the Capital Investment Immigration Plan, was suspended in March 2025, when the Citizenship Commission stopped intake until further notice following a Council of Ministers decision (No. 012 of 2025). Industry sources report that it reopened in late May 2025 under amended rules, citing the Citizenship (CIIP) Amendment Order No. 95 of 2025, but no dated official notice on the Citizenship Office website confirms the current terms, and the amounts reported for it conflict. We therefore confirm its status and amounts at the assessment. The suspension did not affect the Development Support Program (DSP), which is the investment route most families use today.

This page explains what the CIIP was, why figures quoted for it online do not agree, how it differed from the DSP, and what to check if someone offers you a CIIP application. If you are planning an application now, we assess it under the DSP and prepare the file with you; it is lodged through a government-designated agent, as Vanuatu law requires.

What the CIIP Is

The CIIP is one of the routes to citizenship written into the Citizenship Act [Cap 112]. Its main features, as the Citizenship Office's own pages record them:

• Legal basis: section 13C of the Act.
• Form: Form D, which the Office's application forms page describes as the application for the granting of citizenship to an investor under the Capital Investment Immigration Plan.
• How the money worked before the suspension: a non-refundable contribution plus an investment in a designated fund that could be redeemed after a set period. Under the DSP, by contrast, nothing is returned.
• Promotion: the government contracted Vanuatu Registry Services, then based in Hong Kong, as the main agent promoting the plan; forms were collected from it and its agents and lodged with the Commission through it.
• Decision deadline: section 13C(3) requires the Commission to decide a CIIP application within three months.
• Status: suspended in March 2025; reported to have reopened in May 2025 under amended rules, with no official notice yet confirming the current terms.

The Office's summary of the Act's amendments also refers to dual citizenship under the CIIP. Many guides quote the three-month rule as if it covered every investment application. It does not; for the DSP there is no statutory deadline for the decision.

Why CIIP Amounts Quoted Online Do Not Agree

If you search for the cost of the CIIP, you will find totals that differ by tens of thousands of dollars, with different redemption periods attached to them. The sources disagree on the size of the contribution, the size of the redeemable part and whether the money came back after four or five years. The Citizenship Office does not publish the CIIP structure in the same form as the DSP schedule, and its fees page lists Form D charges on a different basis from the DSP amounts.

The amounts reported for the amended plan since May 2025 conflict as well, and no official notice confirming the current terms has been published, so we do not quote CIIP amounts on this site and confirm them at the assessment. Any figure you are given for a CIIP application today should come with the written source it was taken from, and with written confirmation that the plan is accepting the application at all.

Where the CIIP Sits Among Vanuatu's Citizenship Routes

The Citizenship Commission grants citizenship through several routes, each with its own form, and the CIIP is only one of them. The Office's types of citizenship page lists them as follows:

• naturalization (Form A) and marriage to a Vanuatu citizen (Form B), both of which depend on years spent living in Vanuatu;
• entitlement through a parent or grandparent (Form C(a)) and regaining a citizenship previously renounced (Form C(b));
• the Capital Investment Immigration Plan (Form D), suspended in March 2025 and reported to have reopened in May 2025 under amended rules not yet confirmed by an official notice;
• the Development Support Program, listed by the Office as honorary citizenship under the program, and open to applications;
• the Vanuatu Contribution Program, whose current status is not confirmed;
• the Real Estate Option Program, which began on 23 July 2021 and requires the purchase of property in a government-approved project in addition to the prescribed fees.

A frequent error in published guides is to describe Form D as the application form for the investment program in general. Form D belongs to the CIIP alone. A DSP application does not use Form D and is lodged through a designated agent, so an offer that asks you to complete Form D is an offer for the CIIP, not the DSP, and should come with the official terms it relies on.

CIIP and DSP Side by Side

The practical consequence is simple. For a family deciding in 2026, the DSP is the route whose terms can be checked against a published schedule, while the CIIP's current terms have not been confirmed by an official notice. The first question is usually what the DSP costs for your family and whether your documents are ready for it; if the CIIP is on the table, we confirm its status and amounts at the assessment. Our guide to how the DSP works and what it requires covers the rules, and the full cost breakdown sets out each fee and when it is paid.

If Someone Offers You a CIIP Application Now

CIIP offers circulate with figures that do not agree, some taken from pages written before the March 2025 suspension and some citing the amended rules reported since May 2025. Before any money moves, check these points:

1. Ask for the source. Request the official notice or Order that sets out the current CIIP terms and amounts, and check it against the Citizenship Office website. If the agent cannot produce it, do not pay.
2. Check the website. Official Vanuatu government sites end in .gov.vu, and the Citizenship Office warns about fake sites that imitate it. Its own site is vancitizenship.gov.vu.
3. Check the agent. Find the exact name on the Office's Designated Agents list and make sure it is not on the list of individuals and companies that are not recognized as designated agents.
4. Check where the money goes. Government amounts are paid in US dollars only, and the Office does not accept cryptocurrency. A request to send funds to a personal account, or to pay "the government" in crypto, is a reason to stop.
5. Treat urgency as a warning. "Last places before the intake closes" or "a special quota reserved for our clients" are sales lines, not legal facts.

If you are unsure about a particular offer, send it to us. We tell you what can be verified and what cannot, and the process for checking an agent is set out step by step in our guide to choosing an agent and checking it on the official lists.

If You Applied Before the Suspension

The March 2025 decision concerns new applications. How an application lodged before that date is being handled is a matter for the agent that lodged it and the Citizenship Office, and the answer can differ from file to file. Ask the agent for a written status update, including what has been paid, to which account, and what the next step is. Keep copies of every receipt. If the agent cannot give a clear written answer, the Citizenship Office takes inquiries by telephone on (+678) 33365.

Has the CIIP Reopened?

Industry sources report that the CIIP reopened in late May 2025 under amended rules, citing the Citizenship (CIIP) Amendment Order No. 95 of 2025. We have not found a dated official notice on vancitizenship.gov.vu that confirms the current terms, and the amounts reported for the amended plan conflict. Until such a notice is published, there is no reason to assume that any figure you are quoted, including those from before 2025, reflects the current terms. We review the official notices, confirm the CIIP's status and amounts at the assessment and will update this page when the position is confirmed.

Until then, the sensible plan for most families is to treat the DSP as the investment route, to build the file properly and to budget from the published schedule. A free assessment tells you whether your family qualifies, what it would cost and which documents to start gathering.