Even In Pandemic Year, More Rich Indians Wanted To Leave The Country, Buy Citizenship Elsewhere

Golden Visa, also known as ¡®residence-by-investment¡¯ or ¡®citizenship-by-investment¡¯ is a scheme popular among the ultra-rich of the world, wherein you get a long-term residency or citizenship of a country in exchange for making a substantial investment there.

Over the years, the high net-worth individuals of India have emerged as some of the biggest 'customers' for this.

PTI

And 2020 was not different, even in the year when the world came to a standstill, the rich Indians were going ahead with their plans to leave the country and settle elsewhere.

Wealthy Indians making enquiries for Golden Visas

In 2020, wealthy Indians again topped the list of those making enquiries for such Golden Visas.

¡°We saw a 62.6% increase in the number of enquiries received from Indians in 2020 as compared to 2019. The base for 2019 was over 1,500 enquiries,¡± Nirbhay Handa, director and head of global South Asia team, Henley & Partners, told The Times of India.

Reuters

Portugal most popular

According to reports, Portugal¡¯s golden visa residency programme is the most popular among Indians seeking to emigrate to Europe.

Canada, Austria, Malta and Turkey are the other favorites when it comes to rich Indians seeking to settle abroad.

As per ¡®Global Wealth Migration Review¡¯, issued by New World Wealth, Indians were the second largest contingent among the millionaire category to move overseas. Nearly 7,000 wealthy Indians (comprising 2% of the HNWIs) left the country during 2019.

Reuters

With the COVID-19 outbreak, the resilience of several economies worldwide has been tested and provisional estimates show a drop in inward and outward HNWI migration for 2020, it said.