So far this year, 1,099 main applicants and 1,941 of their family members have received residence permits in Portugal under the Golden Visa program.
The overall investment in the program grew by 24% in October, to about EUR 60 million.
With 28 new investors, Chinese participants continued to lead the way, with Brazilians not far behind at 15. Russian investors accounted for seven spots, while South Africans and Turks took four each.
Between the beginning of the year and the end of October, program participants had injected EUR 661.5 million, or an average of EUR 66.15 million per month. Note, however, that approval and investment volumes are usually stronger in November and December than in the summer months, which means that a sprint during the final lap of 2019 may still help the program set a new record.
All told the Golden Visa program has raised EUR 4.9 billion since opening in November 2012, the overwhelming preponderance of which came in the form of Real Estate investments. While this distribution has remained virtually constant throughout the program’s history, the increasing promotion of alternative qualifying asset classes – such as private equity and venture capital investment funds, which have lower minimum investment requirements – has the potential to disrupt this pattern.
