Latest / IMI Podcasts / This Week in IMI - May 14, 2023: Spain's Golden Visa Property Option in Peril, Bulgaria Revokes Investors' Citizenships, Australia Marginalizing Investor Visas, ++
Transcript
- 0:05SPEAKER_00: You're listening to This Week in Investment Migration.
- 0:09SPEAKER_00: The Spanish government is considering whether to raise the minimum investment requirements for its Golden Visa program or scrap the real estate option altogether.
- 0:18SPEAKER_00: Official sources said the government had determined the current 500,000 euro minimum investment requirement for the program's real estate option had become obsolete and was too low, particularly for the country's major cities, where properties in this price class no longer fall into the luxury segment.
- 0:35SPEAKER_00: Questioned as to which investment migration program's processing unit had been the most efficient last year, 10 out of 40 executives responding to the 2023 Investment Migration Executive Survey pointed to the Dominica CIU, a share that's twice as large as that of the Runners-Up, the Community Malta Agency, and the St.
- 0:54SPEAKER_00: Kitts and Nevis CIU.
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Portugal's SEF, which one in six respondents in 2021 identified as the most efficient processing unit, fell off the efficiency ranking entirely this year.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: Bulgaria has revoked the citizenships of at least 17 participants in the country's erstwhile semi-direct citizenship by investment program in the period since abolishing the scheme in March last year.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Considering that the number of individuals who obtained citizenship through investment in Bulgaria numbered only between one and two hundred, the seventeen instances of malfeasance uncovered represent a startlingly large share of the total, indicating the impropriety may not have been limited to a few cases, but instead may have been systemic.
- 1:41SPEAKER_00: Appetite for Panama's investor visas is dwindling.
- 1:44SPEAKER_00: People of independent means, however, are relocating to the country in record numbers.
- 1:49SPEAKER_00: Figures covering the first quarter of this year show Friendly Nations visa approvals down 37% year on year, while independent means visa approvals are up 13%.
- 2:01SPEAKER_00: Declining interest in the Friendly Nations visa is attributable to the recently raised minimum price tag from$5,000 to$200,000.
- 2:11SPEAKER_00: The Australian government has sharply reduced the Availability of Business Innovation and Investment Program visas for the upcoming fiscal year, from 5,000 visas last year to 1,900 for 2023 to 24.
- 2:26SPEAKER_00: Experts expect the decision to exacerbate the program's already record-breaking backlog of applications, which at last count had reached more than 32,000.
- 2:36SPEAKER_00: In her annual review of the EB5 visa program, Varvara Latinseva highlights how changes brought by the Reform and Integrity Act, RIA, affected investors, regional centers, and promoters.
- 2:49SPEAKER_00: In fiscal year 2022, a record 10,885 EB5 visas and adjustments of status were issued, but a backlog of over 40,000 pending EB5 visas persists.
- 3:02SPEAKER_00: Portugal has approved its 12,000th Golden Visa, and total investment now nears 7 billion euros.
- 3:09SPEAKER_00: In April, Portugal approved 116 golden visas on the basis of investments totaling 63 million euros.
- 3:16SPEAKER_00: With 28 approvals, Americans were the top nationality among those approved in April.
- 3:22SPEAKER_00: British investors are becoming more numerous and have now appeared in the monthly top five nationalities list for six of the last eight months.
- 3:32SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.