Citizenship status

Resident or national citizen, what advantages?

The biggest advantage of remaining a resident foreigner is that it appears to be an exemption from certain customs taxes when importing your goods by container. This is information that remains to be verified.

EDIT: I will one day tell you in detail about my looooooooong battle to recover my container during my first repatriation attempt in 2018. I was advised at the time to make my "immigrant" card, a less cool word to say repat, which allows supposedly to be exempt from taxes, but this container cost me the skin of the buttocks, forgive me the expression. I therefore remain mixed on the usefulness and proper application of the tax exemption rules.

What I am sure of is that when creating a business in very specific fields of activity, fiscal taxes are exempted to foreigners in order to encourage the contribution of foreign capital. Here you'll find the investment code for you to check it (in english), but we are talking about major projects worth several million dollars.

The rest of the time, there's no incidence or a foreigner is "disadvantaged" compared to the national citizen. The example of the ferry access ticket for the Bijagos Islands is relevant. In January 2023, the one-way ticket costs 16,500 XOF for foreigners against 11,000 XOF for locals/residents (1st class).

Citizenship to our African-American brothers and sisters

As part of the activities of the “Decade of Return” program, we are doing pioneering work to include all Afro-descendants in the diaspora who have a “right of return” according to the Geneva Convention.

Thus, we asked the Bissau-Guinean Government in May 2021 to grant Bissau-Guinean citizenship to 23 American applicants (12 other files were submitted in February 2023).

After having obtained the 50% reduction in naturalization fees and the exemption of the majority of the pre-required documents, we expect in March 2023, the passage of the settled files before the last stage, the Council of Ministers.

Case to follow!