With the new amendments to Cyprus investment citizenship scheme coming to effect on May 15, the applications has increased almost reaching annual cap of 700 limit.
Insiders hint of an unofficial extension to the May 15 set date for the implementation of the new measures. And that this will concern only those investors who have sales documents in their hands but have failed to submit the required documents beforehand, reported today by Cyprus Mail.
If an investor simply submits the sale document before May 15 and the remaining documents a bit later, then his/her application will be reviewed in accordance with rules and regulations applied before that date.
As far as processing time is concerned, it takes almost six months for approval and passport. All applications that may be submitted over the next few days will be finally approved or declined by the end of the year or even early in 2020.
From May 15 onwards, all citizenship applications submitted under investment scheme are required to
- Hold schengen visa
- Pay additional EUR 150K contribution amount and
- Stricter enhanced checks on applicants.
The Government also issued a tender for selection of due diligence providers ending on May 21, selected DD firms will be announced after that date. The Cypriot parliament recently allotted €1.4 million euros annual budget for three years for due diligence checks for CIP applicants under the citizenship investment scheme.
Currently there are over 500 authorized firms in Cyprus approved by Government promoting the Cypriot citizenship by investment program
According to CYSTAT, the number of building permits authorised by the municipal authorities and the district administration offices during January 2019 increased by 8.2% stood at 544. The total value of these permits reached €117,8 million and the total area 107,0 thousand square metres.
According to a study conducted by Finance ministry last year, the Citizenship scheme has added  € 3.7 billion into real estate and  € 1 billion into businesses creating over 2200 jobs
