Ending the golden visas was an “act of monumental stupidity” says corporate governance boss
The President of the Portuguese Institute of Corporate Governance, João Moreira Rato, has slammed the announcement of the end of the Golden Visa regime by the previous government in February, 2023 as an “act of monumental stupidity”.
In an interview with the business daily Negócios, the president of the Portuguese Institute of Corporate Governance (IPCG), said that the changes made to the Authorisation of Residency for Investment (ARI) are a cause for concern and are seen as a threat to Portugal’s attractiveness to overseas investors.
João Moreira Rato said the end of the regime, decreed at the end of last year by the Government still led by António Costa was “stupid”, taking into account that Portugal not only wants to attract digital nomads, but also attract “human capital with business activities”.
The current government led by Luís Montenegro this year launched a Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation, which replaced the tax regime for Non-Habitual Residents, which because of the impasse over the State Budget for 2024 was put on the back burner and is now waiting for approval from regulators.
João Moreira Rato said that before terminating and then restarting such investment schemes, there first needed to be some political consensus and predictable policies on the matter.
The ICPG boss made his comments on Tuesday at a conference on overseas investment in Portugal organised by Bison Bank.
Tomás Assis Teixeira, a partner at the law firm CCA said that ending investment programmes could actually undermine confidence in Portugal and admitted that the sector is trying to recover from the damage that was caused in 2023 which “successive announcements of tragic things which in the end were not so tragic after all” he said of the abrupt end of the NHR scheme.
Playing down the situation last year, he added: “The point is that we can easily sell Portugal and we have competitive selling points” recalling that the “programme that had existed since 2012 had undergone several alterations”.
On attracting startups, Diogo Mónica, Executive Chairman of Anchorage Digital said he wouldn’t have come to Portugal to set up a startup in 2011 but that today the landscape was quite different, even though he still sees a number of characteristics that makes creating a startup in Portugal “100 times more difficult than in the US”.
José Maria Rego, founder and ex-CEO of Raize said that at the time he left Portugal the country was “a lot more closed” than now, but that “Portugal needs to create an ecosystem to compete.”
The Dean of Novo SBE, Pedro Oliveira, said that there were some great universities in Portugal which could be an attraction point for foreigners.
