Number of approved residency applications decrease

The number of approved applications and applicants at the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) decreased in the first half of 2018, as case review and field inspection have been carried out continuously.

The number of renewal applications also dropped dramatically as compared to last year, the bureau noted in a statement.

In October, IPIM president Jackson Chang, as well as two other high ranking officials including Gloria Batalha Ung, who is member of the Executive Committee, were put under criminal investigation for alleged irregularities regarding the unlawful granting of residency statuses through an investment scheme.

According to the city’s corruption watchdog, the officials were “transferred to the judiciary, owing to their alleged commission of duty-related crimes in the process of vetting and approving the applications for immovable investment immigration, major investment immigration and technical immigration.”

In a statement released by IPIM on Saturday, the institute stated that it has been releasing the quarterly, semi- annual and annual data of temporary residency applications, approved applications and beneficiaries in a bid to enhance its information transparency.

According to a statement, statistics will be further categorized to demonstrate the proportion of the 10 professions in the five industries which are given priority, namely the financial industry, information technology industry, traditional Chinese medicine industry, Portuguese-speaking market and Chinese-Portuguese translation sector, convention and exhibition industry.

It pledged that it would continue to enhance the information transparency in the future.

According to the statistics and industry classification of approved applications between 2015 and 2018 (January – June), the industries involved mainly include: education (32 percent), hotel and dining (24 percent), construction (10 percent), entertainment and gaming (8 percent).

The financial sector accounted for 7 percent.

In addition, according to the statistics of temporary residency for approved investors, management and technical personnel for the first half of 2018, IPIM received a total of four new residency applications based on “major investment”, two applications under the same category were approved, while 10 were denied.

There were 143 new applications based on “management and technical personnel”, 21 of which were approved and 127 were denied.