São Tomé and Príncipe’s citizenship by investment (CBI) program took in 548 applications during its first year, approved 350, and rejected 12. It issued 29 passports over the same period.
Those figures come from the Citizenship by Investment Unit’s (CIU) first-year report, dated 1 September 2026. A further 186 applications sat in process, a third of everything submitted.
Approvals ran well ahead of document issuance
Its fastest file cleared in 26 days, against a reported average of two months.
Delivery is thinner. Against those 350 approvals, the report records 117 citizenships granted and 29 passports issued.
A backlog sits between approval and delivery. Issuance of citizenship documents “has not progressed at the same pace as application approvals,” the unit acknowledges. Remedies named are post-approval procedures, coordination between institutions, and office capacity in São Tomé.
Jeremy Savory, chief executive of Savory & Partners, sees the same pattern from the agent side. Every approval delivers four government documents: A birth registry entry, a national identity card, a citizenship certificate, and a passport.
Four documents is unusual, and it is why three departments touch every file. Processing “is fast, provided there are no errors in any of the three departments involved,” Savory says. One error sends the whole file back to the start.
“It has gotten slower since the first files,” Savory says of the pipeline. “Given the sheer volume, they are getting backed up, and scaling the unit to keep up with this level of demand will be a challenge.”
That is not where he lands, though. “I’m confident they will iron out the kinks in the process.”
He reads that as a growing pain rather than a defect. Programs he has worked with have run out of passports in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and others have dealt with courier failures, wire transfer problems, and natural disasters.
“Every new program has teething problems,” he says. “The negative is minor, and on balance the positive far outweighs it.”
What he credits is the speed and responsiveness of the unit, and of CIU Director Disney Leite Ramos in particular. “We have seen Caribbean programs thrive or dive based on the leadership at the unit,” Savory says. “With someone like Disney in charge, it has a bright future.”
Both timing figures rest on files that finished. Four months to passport describes the 29 that got one, not the 117 citizenships granted.
Approval timing works the same way. A two-month average sits alongside 186 files still in process, against the roughly 90 that two months at the year’s average intake would produce.
The government has approved 64% of applications it recieved in its first year of operation, while a third of applications remain in the pipeline, and the rejection rate sits at 2%.
Each application nets the fund about US$56,000
Approximately half of the 350 approved applications completed their qualifying contribution payments, according to the report, generating over US$9.8 million for the National Transformation Fund (NTF).
That is roughly US$56,000 per funded application. Fund donations start at US$90,000 for a single applicant and US$95,000 for a family of two to four.
China, Russia, and Iran supplied 60% of the applicant book
China leads at 29% of the book, with Russia at 22%, Iran at 9%, and Germany fourth at 5%.
Ten applications came from stateless persons, whom the report lists as a category in its own right. The unit counts 72 nationalities served.
Russia and Iran between them account for 31% of the year’s intake. Neither nationality has an unrestricted route into the Eastern Caribbean.
All five Caribbean programs closed to Russians and Belarusians under the principles they agreed with the US Treasury. Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia bar Iranians outright. Antigua and Barbuda and Grenada admit them only on narrow residence conditions, and Dominica suspended new Iranian applications in March 2026.
São Tomé accepts every nationality except North Korean, stateless investors can apply.
Savory reads that as the commercial point. “It is very clear to see why there is such demand,” he says.
Being free of “the nationality restrictions the other programs have” widens the addressable market. Price does the rest: “Once you have a low price and attractive speed, you will get a lot of people.”
Small Families Make Up Applicant Majority
Families of two to four filed 47% of applications. Single applicants filed 43%, and families of five to eight 10%. Single applicants filed 43% of applications.
The report attributes 35% of all applications to families of three and four, leaving roughly 64 files of two in the middle band.
The Dependants Law and the three-nationality hold carry into year two
Two legislative gaps sit behind the delivery figures. On 10 April 2026, Ramos signed a memorandum placing a hold on applications from anyone holding three or more foreign nationalities. It cites Nationality Law No. 07/2022.
That same memorandum froze passport issuance for adult dependents pending a revised dependency framework. Neither measure appears anywhere in the report.
Jeffrey Henseler, whose firm Passport Legacy designed the program, places both on the year-two agenda. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us, particularly in finalising the Dependants Law and ensuring that processing timelines are significantly reduced once an application has been approved,” he told IMI. “These will be among our top priorities for year two.”
Ramos frames the first twelve months as “a period of building.” His stated priorities for the second year run to “strengthening our processes, maintaining high standards of compliance and due diligence.”
“Really Fantastic” Report
Savory rates the disclosure highly, calling the report “really fantastic.” “What I like best is that they actually share these types of reports,” he says. “I wish more programs would.”
His own firm makes the case. Thanks to the report, he found out his firm accounted for 17% of the passports issued so far. That share surprised him, and he had no way of calculating it until the CIU published the totals, highlighting how important reports like these are for agents.
