{"id":21905,"date":"2020-08-21T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T22:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/aug\/21\/surge-in-passport-sales-delivers-vanuatu-a-record-budget-surplus"},"modified":"2020-08-21T07:00:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T22:00:32","slug":"surge-in-passport-sales-delivers-vanuatu-a-record-budget-surplus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=21905","title":{"rendered":"Surge in passport sales delivers Vanuatu a record budget surplus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Economy devastated by Covid shutdowns and a destructive cyclone, but citizenships-for-sale are keeping the country afloat<\/p>\n<p>Surging demand for Vanuatu passports has driven an unexpected record surplus, funding Covid-19 bailout packages and cyclone recovery.<\/p>\n<p>With nearly every other sector of its fragile economy reeling from the twin crises of pandemic lockdowns and April\u2019s category five Cyclone Harold, Vanuatu nonetheless managed to turn a 3.8bn Vanuatu Vatu (US$33.3m) surplus in the first half of 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Its controversial citizenship-for-sale programmes account for nearly all of that.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/aug\/21\/surge-in-passport-sales-delivers-vanuatu-a-record-budget-surplus\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Economy devastated by Covid shutdowns and a destructive cyclone, but citizenships-for-sale are keeping the country afloatSurging demand for Vanuatu passports has driven an unexpected record surplus, funding Covid-19 bailout packages and cyclone recover&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,1069,874,282,323,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-coronavirus-outbreak","category-pacific-islands","category-south-pacific","category-vanuatu","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21906,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21905\/revisions\/21906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}