It seems like this year will be the year for Portugal Golden Visa!
In February, Portugal’s Golden Visa program raised € 52.3 million from 100 investors and 135 family members. This number is a month-on-month rise of 58% in the terms of Euro, and an increase of 82% in several approvals.
According to IMI Daily, while three in four applicants chose the conventional € 500,000 property investment in January, fewer than two-thirds did so in February. And thus, the figures are all the more encouraging when considering February has 11% fewer days than January. Moreover, last month’s approval volumes also represented a 43% improvement in February a year ago.
The trend also shows an accelerating interest in Portugal’s € 350,000 investment fund option, as this year, 8% of applicants have elected this route, which is up from 4% in 2020 and just 0.6% in 2019.
Interest of Portugal Golden Visa amongst investors
Americans, once more, made it into the top five applicant nationalities list, where they have featured consecutively since August 2020, except December last year.
Chinese investors’ share of the program’s overall nationality distribution has been steadily declining since 2015. However, so far in the year, the interests of Chinese investors seem to again increase in the Portugal Golden Visa.
According to IMI Daily, so far in 2021, a rebound in Chinese uptake for Portugal’s program is observable. But as not too long has passed by since the beginning of the year, it would be premature to characterize this rise as a changing of the winds.
In February, the program’s encouraging performance brought the cumulative Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for the year’s two first months to € 85 million, spread over 155 different investments.
The IMI Daily also states that the Portugal Golden Visa program is furthermore close to the 10,000 investments milestone. Portugal is likely to celebrate this triumph at some point in the year’s third quarter. Thus it seems that the demand for the visa program will only continue to grow in 2021.
Acquest Advisors is an immigration advisory firm specializing in Business Immigration and Residency and Citizenship by Investment programs offered by Governments of American & European countries.