How much Vanuatu earns from one passport

In brief: how much the state keeps

• Of a 130,000-dollar contribution the state keeps around 80,000.
• The rest is the licensed agents’ fees and mandatory charges.
• By actual revenue, each passport issued accounts for about 5.1-5.2 million vatu.
• That is roughly 42,000-43,000 dollars in average revenue per person.
• The difference is explained by families: a spouse and children cost less than the main applicant.

How the contribution breaks down

The payment structure for a single applicant under the DSP programme looks like this.

According to the European Commission’s estimate, of 130,000 dollars the state keeps about 80,000, and the rest is shared between licensed agents. For a family of four the payment is from 180,000, and the state’s share of it is proportionally higher.

The full estimate with all fees and work is covered separately in what Vanuatu citizenship really costs. It also shows why the total is always higher than the stated contribution figure.

What this means for you. On top of the DSP contribution only the Financial Intelligence Unit fee is paid, USD 5,000 for the whole application. Work on preparing the application and translating documents is charged separately, per invoice.

What it comes to in practice

Now the same thing from the other side, from money to people. We take the official revenue figures and divide them by the official numbers of passports issued over the same periods.

Two independent samples give almost the same result: about 5.1-5.2 million vatu per passport, roughly 42,000-43,000 dollars. The convergence of the two calculations is the main argument that the figure is correct.

How much the state receives on average per passport issued. The first two values are calculated from official data: programme revenue divided by the number of passports issued over the same period. The 2024 and 2025 figures are a BRIDGES estimate based on Reserve Bank of Vanuatu reporting and our practice.

Why 43,000 and not 80,000

The gap between the calculated figure and the state’s share of one contribution is puzzling until you remember that the passport is received not only by the main applicant.

• The main applicant pays the full amount.
• A spouse adds 20,000 dollars to the contribution.
• The first two children add 15,000 each.
• Each further participant in the application is added at a separate tariff.

A family of four receives four passports for 180,000 or more. The average revenue per document falls to just over forty thousand, exactly what the calculation shows. How this works when applying is covered in the article on Vanuatu citizenship for the whole family.

The budget for a family can be calculated in advance. Calculate for the family

What it gives the applicant

The calculation is useful not in itself but through three practical conclusions.

First: applying as a family is better value than one by one. Each additional family member in the application costs many times less than filing separately later. The difference for a family of four is measured in tens of thousands of dollars.

Second: the price will not fall. The programme brings the state more than a hundred million dollars a year with administrative costs of less than one per cent of that amount. There are no economic reasons to lower the contribution, and historically it has only risen.

Third: there are no discounts. The government part of the payment is fixed and goes to the treasury account. If you are offered a price noticeably below the market, the saving comes either from the agent’s fee or from the amount of work on preparing the application. The latter costs more than it saves. We wrote about what this looks like in real life in the article on Vanuatu passport scams.

How the entry price has changed

The programme contribution did not rise once but consistently, and each increase came with tighter requirements. The trend according to our practice and the conditions in force at the time.

In ten years the entry price has risen by more than half and has never fallen. This is a direct consequence of what the calculation shows: the programme is too important to the budget to be discounted. Historically, waiting for better terms has cost applicants more than applying straight away.

Compared with other programmes

The size of the state’s share in the payment is a useful guide when choosing between programmes. It shows what you are paying for: a contribution to the treasury or servicing the process.

In all cases this is a non-refundable payment, not an investment with a return. This is a fundamental point worth spelling out before signing: the money does not come back under any scenario, including refusal after the checks; in that case the part not covered by fees already incurred is returned. We keep a detailed money comparison in the article Vanuatu or the Caribbean.

When a client sees the calculation of forty-three thousand per passport, the first reaction is that this means there is room to bargain. No, there is not. The government part goes to the treasury account at a fixed rate, and it is the same with all licensed agents. The forty-three thousand is an average across all documents received, including children, not the entry price. There is exactly one practical conclusion from it: include everyone you are planning to in the application at once. Adding a wife and child a year after the passport costs noticeably more than doing it straight away and restarts some of the checks.

Sergey EvdokimovManaging Partner, BRIDGES

Vanuatu cost calculator →

How to make sure the money went to the state

Since we are examining how much the treasury receives, it makes sense to show how to check this in your own case. The mechanics are simple, but they are rarely explained.

• An official invoice. The government part of the payment is invoiced by the authority, not by an intermediary. Ask for it before the transfer, not after.
• A treasury account. The funds go to a government account whose details match the published ones. The agent’s personal or corporate account should not appear in this chain.
• Confirmation of receipt. After the transfer the authority confirms receipt, and you must be shown this confirmation.
• A separate line for the work. The agent’s fee and our work are paid under a contract as a separate payment, not within the contribution.

If all four points are met, the question “did the money really arrive” is settled by documents. If you are asked to transfer the whole amount in one payment to an intermediary’s account, that is a reason to stop and look into it, however convincing the explanation sounds.

What this money means for Vanuatu

For a country with a population of about three hundred thousand, a hundred-odd million dollars a year is not an additional line of revenue but a load-bearing structure of the budget. The upkeep of the Citizenship Commission itself is set at about 82 million vatu in the 2026 budget, less than one per cent of what the programme brings in.

Hence the answer to the question asked most often: the programme will not be closed. External pressure concerns third countries’ visa regimes, not Vanuatu’s right to grant citizenship as such. We keep a detailed review of the programme’s stability in the article Vanuatu 2026: the year in figures.

Where the money goes inside the country

This question is asked less often than it should be, yet it is directly linked to the programme’s stability. The funds go into the development support fund and then into the general budget.

For a state with a population of about three hundred thousand, this is comparable to the largest items of its own revenue. The programme funds recovery after cyclones, infrastructure and current budget spending. That is why decisions about it are taken at parliamentary level, and the programme itself is enshrined in law; the legal framework is reviewed in the article the official Vanuatu citizenship programme.

The practical conclusion for the applicant: the programme has an internal beneficiary in the country’s budget, and that is stronger than any external pressure. Programmes are closed where they are politically more costly than they are economically beneficial. In Vanuatu the ratio is the reverse.

What Vanuatu citizenship costs →Hidden costs →

How we calculated

Programme revenue for 2014-2019 is taken from Reserve Bank of Vanuatu reporting, and the number of passports issued over the same periods from official Vanuatu reports. The average revenue per passport is the quotient of these two values, calculated on two independent samples. The state’s share of the contribution is a European Commission estimate. The tariffs for a spouse and children are according to the current DSP programme conditions, and the Citizenship Commission’s costs according to Vanuatu’s 2026 budget.