Portugal’s ‘Golden Visa’ residency programme has been ranked the best residency in the world by Henley and Partners, a residency and citizenship planning office.
The office makes an annual comparison of the world’s most relevant immigration programmes and ranks them accordingly. This year, it rated 19 residency programmes, with Portugal’s Golden Residency Permit ranking first, followed by Austria and Belgium.
Its success comes from it being relatively easy to make investment in the country, the short time it takes to process the applications and from foreign nationals later being able to apply for residency, which can eventually become citizenship. Residency in Portugal means visa-free travel to 25 countries, according to the immigration experts.
While a minimum investment amount of €500,000 in the real estate market is one of the key conditions for eligibility, other options are to transfer €100,000 to a local bank account or to create 10 jobs on the local job market.
“Out of the ten indicators measured, Portugal ranked highest on the total costs indicator due to the fact that the total investment requirement is significantly lower than in other residency programmes,” the report said.
