Latest / IMI Podcasts / Panama Promise Low-Presence, 5-Year Citizenship Path

Transcript

Panama Promise Low-Presence, 5-Year Citizenship Path · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We want to take in twenty twenty six this program to the next level.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I could tell you that in Panama we're doing on average about twenty-five qualified investor visas a month.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh our goal is to make it a hundred and fifty.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most of our qualified investors in the last year are coming from North America with a US or Panama.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The only requirement that you have is you have to be a Panama once every two years during the five years of your residency.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll qualify for citizenship.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It qualifies you for citizenship.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Eduardo Arango.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the Vice Minister of Internal Commerce of the Republic of Panama.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm here to tell you today why Panama is the most attractive place for you to get your permanent residency.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have a great qualified investors program, but most of all, we have one of the best countries in the world.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to tell you why.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Qualified Investors Program started in 2020.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a great idea to get it done, uh, to start, but it never promoted well.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So even though it's a great program, and I would say one of the best in the world, people don't know about it much.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So uh what we have done in this administration, it's uh make it our goal to create out there, to make it known, to have people understand what Panama's all about, what it's uh qualified investor program, it's all about.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we're uh also working on making it even better than what it was when we first got in here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, first of all, as a program, it has the characteristics of the best programs similar to the best programs in the world.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I would say uh one of the most attractive characteristics is that with a$300,000 real estate investment, you can um get your permanent residency in less than 60 days.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it takes between 30 or 45 days.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, uh, once you're resident for five years, you can aspire to be a national uh Panaman and get your naturalization process done and get a Panaminian Pascal.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the key factors.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then if you look into Panama as a country, then we have many, many things that make Panama a very appealing place to be in and to invest at.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our dollar ice economy is a very safe country, our um geographical position or connectivity with the whole world.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're the help of the Americas.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can fly to Panama directly from pretty much any major city in the northern hemisphere and in South America.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, Panama is the kind of a the right place to be.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the qualified investor has three options of investment being the most popular, the uh real estate investment, that's why we started talking about that one.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But we also have an option where you can invest$500,000 in the uh the stock market on a Panamanian brokerage firm, or you can invest$750,000 in a time deposit in a Panamania bank.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So those are all the two options that an investor could use to uh date the Reset C pound.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned uh you have to do the investment as part of the of your application.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: In order for you to send money to Panama, we're gonna go through a very detailed screening process, very strong due diligence process because Panama has one of the world's strongest banking systems, but it's also one of the most and best regulated banking systems in the world.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, in order for you to send funds to Panama, we're gonna make sure that we know where those funds come from, that they come from a legal source, that the person who is sending them has no issues with the law.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So by the time you apply, you have already been put through a screening process.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the acceptance uh percentage is so high.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: If we go back all the way to the beginnings of the program, our qualified investors that mostly, if you look at the numbers, mostly come from Colombia.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a good reason for that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Colombia is right next to us.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: We're very familiar with Panama.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Colombians really like Panama as we like them too.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, with the changes in government and the situation, economic situations in Colombia, a lot of people decided to come and get a residency program uh established in Vama, their permanent residency.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But in the last year or so, we have started to see changes to that trend.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Colombia has gone down to probably the third place, and uh most of our qualified investors in the last year are coming from North America.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's the main difference would be the speed where you get the residence.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you go through the Friendly Nations program, it's gonna take you two years to get your permanent residence through the qualified investor.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: As I said at the beginning of the interview, you're gonna get it in 30 days, 45 days.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty much time is the main issue there.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the reasons that I think uh it's uh the most important in why North Americans are the ones that are coming to Panama now, it's because it's so familiar to Panama.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's we're we're the number one ally of the US commercial, and uh we've had a very, very good relationship for more than 100 years.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So for an American, when you talk about Panama, it's very familiar.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then we use the dollar, which is the same currency that they that we have in the US, and it's pretty much easy, it's an easy process to come and get a residency for earn.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Panama has always been a destination, but it's always been a destination for tourists.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we have been known for for a long time.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our beaches, our mountain, our coffee, the Panama Canal.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what people come down here to seek.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But now, in the most recent times, we're turning into a destination for investment through the qualified investor program.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Only not that.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're also trying to uh bring foreign investment into all kinds of industries.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pharmaceutical, uh, we're trying to bring investment to the logistics sector.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Panama is a destination, it's always been, but now for different reasons.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is changing because under the presidency of President Molino, he has made a priority for him to catch back on that big delay, that backlog that we had of files regarding naturalization.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: For many governments, as you said, several previous administrations, for some reason I don't understand, they were just not signing the naturalization documents.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And very responsibly, but President Molino has uh has taken the necessary steps to start uh signing those documents.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the backlog was very big, and he's trying to get those old documents signed and then get the new ones done as they come in so we don't keep on adding to that backlog.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, in this administration, we're trying to get that huge delay that we have had in the past reduced.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, it is very unique, and uh that's true that we take our citizenship very, very seriously.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we take it to the highest authority in the country, which is the president of Panama, to sign that document.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So just by that, you you can tell how important it is for us to give the Panamania nationality to someone.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the process is very transparent.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The process is once you get your residency, after five years, you can apply for naturalization.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: As I say, we're trying to, once you apply, make that process as short and as fast-tracked as possible.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it takes some time because once you have your five years of residency, then you have to again go back to the two villages and say up to what once you apply to a naturalization, they have to look into what you have done in the past five years.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have you complied with every step of the uh residency program?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Has anything changed in your uh criminal records or anything before you get that naturalization?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the process is fairly straightforward.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Through the qualified investor program, the only requirement that you have is you have to be a Tama once every two years during the five years of your residence.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they will qualify for citizenship.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it qualifies you for suicide with the Friendly Nations uh visa.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your requirement would be having a physical residency in Panama for two years.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you would have to have an actual residency in Panama for two years before you can apply for suicide.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: We want to protect the program as much as possible.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in Panama we have resident uh presidential periods of five years.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when governments change, sometimes rules change.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that we are trying to accomplish now and the changes that we're trying to make to the program to make it even better is to have some kind of certainty that once you apply to the program under a certain set of rules, those rules will be respected no matter which government is in power at the moment.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we're working on that right now.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what it means is that you won't get taxed in Panama as a resident for any income that you make outside of Panama.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you can be a full-time resident, a permanent resident of Panama, come to Panama once every two years, and come to Panama every year, and you will not be taxed in Panama for any income that you generate.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: What we want to do is make it interesting for you as an investor to come to Panama, to buy property in Panama, and uh therefore, like I said before, create jobs, create economic movement.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, we're so confident that we have one of the best countries in the world that we know that when you come to Panama as a qualified investor for one time every two years, you're gonna want to come to Panama a lot more, and you're probably gonna use your property more and spend money in Panama.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's our incentive.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's our incentive for bringing me a lot of people.