Solomon Islands lists investment as proof, not as a citizenship route

Since 2 October 2023 the law of the Solomon Islands has expressly named investment as something an applicant for citizenship may put in evidence. It has not made investment a way of becoming a citizen. The two are easy to confuse and the difference is the subject of this article, which states the position as at 20 September 2026.

What the statute now says

Citizenship is governed by the Citizenship Act 2018 as amended by the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2023, which came into force on 2 October 2023 under a commencement notice published in the Gazette.

Section 14(1) is a closed list: a person is eligible “if the person meets the criteria specified in subsection (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) or (7)”. Six grounds follow — residence-based naturalisation and a variant for applicants with a permanent incapacity; resumption of a birth citizenship; descent from a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent who is or was a birth citizen; marriage to a birth citizen for a continuous period of at least five years; and a child included in an approved parent’s application. The 2023 Act did not add a seventh.

What it did was rewrite one condition inside the first of them. An applicant on the residence ground must be “likely to continue to reside in Solomon Islands or to maintain a close and continuing relationship with Solomon Islands”, and the amendment appended to those words the phrase “as supported by”, followed by three categories of proof, each “inclusive of, but not limited to” its examples. The first is evidence of economic sustainability — a local employment agreement, a record of employment or of National Provident Fund contributions over five years, or bank records showing means of sustenance. The second is evidence of capital properties, such as land title registered in the person’s name under the Land and Titles Act. The third is evidence of financial contribution to the economy: “investment in a company registered under the person’s name” or “a minimum 10% or more share of an Investment Company registered under the person’s name”.

Two qualifications travel with those words. The applicant “must provide the relevant original or certified documents and any authentic information” to satisfy them, and “the Commission has discretion to accept all or any evidence” under the three limbs. Capital may go to one condition of one ground. It does not carry the application.

The same Act lengthened the route. It amended the residence requirement by deleting “5 years within the 10 year period” and substituting “10 years”, so an applicant to whom that requirement applies must have been ordinarily resident for a full ten years immediately before applying, rather than five years inside a ten-year window. Ordinary residence means having made the country one’s home, with continuity of residence apart from temporary absences. The requirement is not universal: the same amendment provides that it does not apply to a person born in the Solomon Islands, or to a child of a parent or parents who are birth citizens. Where it does apply, the Citizenship Commission has 120 days to decide, may approve only an applicant eligible under section 14, and may refuse even an eligible one on grounds of public policy or the national interest.

The bill that was announced

On 11 September 2024 the government’s services portal published a statement to parliament by the then prime minister, Jeremiah Manele: “the first draft of the bill for citizen by investment has been completed by the AG’s chambers and is undergoing further peer review before submission to Cabinet for its consideration”. Consultation would follow, the statement said, before the bill was “finalised for tabling in Parliament”. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported the same announcement that November. Neither account carried a threshold, a contribution figure or a fee, and none was identified in any source reviewed here.

Nothing answering that description has appeared since in the place it would appear. The National Parliament publishes its bills by year, and a title search of those registers for 2022 to 2026 — 44 bills — returns no investment-citizenship bill. It returns two citizenship bills: the first became the 2023 Act described above, and the second is before parliament now and concerns revocation.

The government that announced the proposal has changed. Matthew Wale was elected prime minister on 15 May 2026, after a successful motion of no confidence vacated the office. The sources reviewed here do not establish the present government’s position on the route.

What that second bill would mean for an applicant

The point is narrow but it is real. A person who obtains citizenship on the existing residence ground — including one who used investment evidence to satisfy the relationship condition — is a citizen “on application under Part 3”, and that is the class the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2026 addresses. It would leave the present misrepresentation ground alone, which requires that the person “is convicted” of giving false or misleading information to the Commission, and add a separate ground requiring no conviction: that the Commission “is satisfied on reasonable grounds” that the person has engaged in conduct seriously prejudicing the stability, security, defence, public safety or public order of the country. The new ground would not reach a person who resumed a birth citizenship. The bill is not law: the Bills and Legislation Committee called for submissions on 31 August 2026 and listed a hearing for 2 September, then postponed that inquiry until further notice, and no new date appears in the parliament’s press releases, the most recent dated 11 September.

What can be applied for

The Immigration Division’s portal offers, under “Investing”, one product: a business visa for business-related activities such as meetings, conferences, trade negotiations or short-term consultancy work, at 450 US dollars for up to 180 days, multiple entry, not extendable. Under “Migrate”, its long-term residents visa costs 1,500 US dollars, runs five years, is extendable, requires five years of continuous prior stay on other dependency visas, and grants no automatic work rights. The portal publishes no citizenship-by-investment product, no application form and no guidance for one, and it has no citizenship route page at all: the address that would hold one returns the site’s “page not found”.

In April 2025 the Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet put the position more bluntly than any of this. Its head of policy, McFaddean Aoraunisaka, said in a statement reported by RNZ Pacific that “there is no lawful citizenship by investment program currently in place”, that claims the programme was operating were “false and fraudulent”, and that legal action would be taken against parties misusing the country’s name for a scam.

What to watch

One thing would change the position: legislation creating an investment route. It would leave three traces, and they are not the same event. A bill appears on the parliament’s bills register; an Act appears on the Acts register; and because recent citizenship legislation has commenced on a day appointed by the minister by notice in the Gazette, a commencement notice says when the new rules bind. That last date is the one that matters, and it is the furthest from the announcement.

Until then, eligibility is the six grounds of section 14, none of which is investment; capital may support one condition of the residence ground, at the Commission’s discretion; and no official investment-citizenship application process was identified in any source reviewed for this article.