Under the scheme approved by Parliament in 2012 and launched in 2013, participating foreign nationals buying 300,000 eurosʼ worth of bonds from approved agents can obtain a residency permit in an accelerated procedure. The limit was raised from €250,000 as of January 1 of this year.
In 2013, when a total of 440 residency bonds were sold, 429 of them were purchased by Chinese nationals, a table attached by Pintér shows. Out of the 1,919 such purchases in 2014, 1,667 were from Chinese nationals, and out of the 537 residency bond purchases by September 30 of this year, 390 were from Chinese.
Russian nationals bought two bonds in 2013, 118 in 2014 and 53 this year. There were 14 Iranian bond holders last year, as well as 34 other nationalities, including Egyptian, Pakistani, Syrian, Turkish and Ukrainian nationals, but the number of applications did not reach a dozen in any of these cases.
Bonds amounting to €110 mln were issued under the scheme in 2013, about €480 mln in 2014 and €161 mln in the first nine months of this year, the data suggest, assuming no foreign national invested more than the minimum amount.
The revenue raised by the central budget is less given that the five-year non-tradable residency bonds, bought by agents, approved by parliamentary committee, are discount government bonds. Under the scheme the foreign nationals do not buy the bonds but securities issued by agents.
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