by World Citizenship Council
The Portugal parliament last friday voted against closing the golden visa scheme by 4-2. This is an exciting news and a dramatic victory for the golden visa industry.
Portugal is leading the golden visa industry from the front with similar golden visa schemes running in other nine EU member states such as Spain, Greece, Latvia, The Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, Bulgaria and also in United Kingdom. As of 2018, the golden visa schemes in europe has contributed some $25 billion FDI.
Portugal opened its golden visa scheme in Oct 2012, at a time it was struggling with economy, unemployment and low growth. In a period of just six years, Portugal has received investment inflows of €4.25 billion euros through golden visa scheme.
The golden visa schemes of Portugal, Greece, Spain, Latvia are also not listed in the OECD list of CBI/RBI schemes.
Golden visa schemes offer only residence to investors with a future path to citizenship. This is a better solution of those High-net-worth families who come from a country such as China, India where acquiring foreign citizenship or becoming a dual national is prohibited.
The EU member states issued a total of 3 million residence permits in 2017 for various reasons. For the same year portugal issued 1351 residence permits for investors and 2678 family members according to SEF. This only represents 0.1% of the residence permits issued by Portugal under golden visa scheme. In other words, one residence permit issued by portugal for golden visa out of 1000 issued by EU member states.
Similarly according to EU statistics, Portugal granted a total of 37,242 residence permits for all reasons in the year 2017. For the same year 2017, a total of 4029 residence permits for golden visa (includes all investors and family members). This represents 10% of residence permits issued for golden visa investments of all the residence permits issued in Portugal and for main investors constitute 3.6%.
About World Citizenship Council (WCC)
World Citizenship Council (WCC) is a non-profit organization for research, development and promotion of the citizenship/ residency schemes throughout the world. The Council will focus on key areas, such as, due diligence and new technologies will help countries with these issues.
Other issues such as migration, refugees, taxation and dual citizenship will be on the forefront. The council will organize biggest forums, events and seminars to bring together Governments, Associations and professionals of the CBI/RBI/EB-5 industry together to address migratory issues.
The Council invites the best professionals in the due diligence industry to contribute their skills and knowledge in helping countries running CBI/RBI schemes.
