After almost 6 months, SEF is accepting Golden Visa applications

After 5 and a half months of inoperability, the portal of the Portuguese Immigration and Border Service (SEF), is accepting applications for the Portuguese Golden Visa program (ARI). Although there were some alterations made at the beginning of 2022 in the program’s regulation, applications have already started coming in.

During the last 5 months, the gold visa applications have been frozen. Investors, developers, and real estate agents could not be more satisfied with the decision to reopen since, even with the new regulation, the program still deserves attention from the investors.

Giving more strength to this way of capturing investment was yesterday’s veto of the proposals of PCP, BE, and PAN to end the gold visas, in Parliament. PS considered that it is time to evaluate the last legislative amendment and the recommendation of PSD to the government was accepted for urgent regulation to operationalize the platform and submit online applications for real estate purposes in the Autonomous Regions of Madeira and the Azores and within the continental territory.

In the first five months of this year, SEF approved an overall investment of 238.1 million euros, which translates into a year-on-year increase of 18.4%. 494 visas were granted, against the 378 registered in the same period of 2021. These values refer to applications from last year, and the ones from December have yet to be analyzed.