Portugal’s economy has gone through a steady recuperation from a deep recession. An extensive structural modification agenda has supported this recovery and the ongoing diminution of imbalances built up in the past. Stronger investment, skills, and productivity will increasingly be the basis for sustainable income gains. Portugal has undertaken a determined structural reform program since 2011. Reforms have spanned across a wide range of policy areas, product markets, labor markets, taxes, regulations, and the public sector. These reforms have supported a gradual recovery of the Portuguese economy, with additional tailwinds resulting from highly accommodative monetary policy and low oil prices.
When it comes to investment ratio or percentage, Portugal has had a less pronounced surge in investment since before the crisis than other euro area countries, and following the sharp post-crisis decline investment is now more than 30% below its 2005 level. Private and public investment also declined from 15.3% and 5.3% of GDP in 2010, respectively, to 13.0% and 2.3% in 2015. European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) now amount to 1.9% of GDP and finance a large part of public investment. During the first half of 2016, investment has fallen even further. Turning this around and rebuilding the capital stock is one of the key challenges for the economy. To cope with this issue, Portugal has introduced a new visa policy to be promulgated in 2018. Portugal’s golden visa residency and second passport program is the most efficient option for those who want to live and work in the European Union.
Portugal is also the best second passport option by investment in the European Union. Portugal is not the cheapest residency and second passport program, it’s the best indeed.
Most investors put up € 1 million to start a business or buy real estate for at least € 500,000. Legal and government fees are additional. The Portuguese Immigration Services have released the statistics of the Golden Visa program up to the end of April 2017. These numbers show that the total investment brought by the program is over 3.3 billion Euros. According to these statistics, there were a total of 5,412 investors and 9,023 family members approved up to the end of October 2017, with the vast majority of an investor’s still selecting property as their qualifying investment. After analyzing the situation Portuguese government has decided to introduce some changes to the general immigration law of the country. This would be a helpful step to widen the scope of qualifying investments and correspondence. The Portuguese government has actually indulged two new categories of investment for the granting of the residence permit for investment (ARIs): the transfer of capital for the constitution of companies or for the reinforcement of the company’s share capital already existing and the transfer of capital dedicated to investment of companies, which are submitted to the process of corporate recovery (PER). Moreover, the reduction of amounts less than those previously required of capital transferred for the acquisition of units in units of investment funds or of venture capital dedicated for the capitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises which, for that purpose, present their viable capitalization plan. They have also introduced the residence visas and authorization which permits for teaching activity and for cultural activity, allowing the difference between the activity of investigation and the teaching activity in a teaching facility or of vocational training, adopting a better definition of the system of entry and stay of these categories of immigrants. All these statistics and initiatives show a clear indication that if any of the countries want to maintain relations with the European countries, Portugal is indeed the gate of opportunity to further entries in the European market. This also suggests that such initiatives can be utterly beneficial if taken. Any country by emulating such trends within its own circumstances can engage investors for mutual benefits.
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