Fund, donation or company:the route is chosen onceand held for five years

The five routes as a decision table

Every qualifying investment must be held for at least five years, must not be directed at real estate, and must be funded by transfer from abroad.¹ Within those limits the routes split by whether the capital comes back and who has to do anything during the five years.

The fund route

The fund route requires €500,000 in units of collective investment undertakings constituted under Portuguese law that do not invest in real estate, with a maturity of at least five years at the time of the investment and at least 60% of the portfolio in companies headquartered in Portugal.¹ Those four conditions are the legal test. Projected returns, the manager's track record and the sector the fund invests in are not, and AIMA does not assess them.

Risk

The whole sum is at market risk for the life of the fund. The permit does not protect it, and a fund that loses value does not release the holder from the five-year undertaking; what the undertaking requires is that the investment is kept, not that it keeps its value.¹

Liquidity at year five

The permit requires the investment to be held for at least five years, and the fund must have at least five years to run when the units are bought.¹ The two periods do not have to end together. A fund with an eight-year life, or an extension clause the manager can trigger, keeps the money locked after the permit no longer needs it. The question for the manager is what a unit-holder can do in year five and year six, and at what price.

What to read in a fund's documents

• The constitutional documents: the legal form, whether the fund is registered with the Portuguese securities regulator (CMVM), and whether real estate is excluded by the rules rather than by current practice.
• The maturity date, any extension clauses, and who can trigger them.
• The investment policy: how the 60% Portuguese-company allocation is defined and tested, and what happens if the fund falls below it.¹
• Redemption and transfer terms: lock-up periods, notice, gates, and whether units can be sold to another investor.
• The fee schedule: subscription, management, performance and exit fees, and whether any are charged on committed rather than invested capital.
• The manager's draft declaration for AIMA, confirming maturity, the 60% rule and the capitalisation plan, before subscribing rather than after.¹

The donation routes

The cultural route is €250,000 applied to artistic production or to the recovery and maintenance of national cultural heritage, through public bodies or private foundations with public-utility status, and the amount falls by 20% in a low-density territory.¹ The research route is €500,000, or €400,000 in a low-density territory, applied to research activities at institutions within the national scientific and technological system.¹ Neither is returned to the applicant.

The trade is certainty for capital. There is no fund to monitor, no manager to chase for a declaration at renewal and no year-five exit to plan, because there is nothing to exit. The evidence is a single declaration from the receiving body, which makes that body's competence to issue it the thing to verify.¹ Ask who signs, under what authority, and what happens if the project the money supports is cancelled after the permit is granted.

The company routes

The €500,000 company route requires either the incorporation of a company headquartered in Portugal together with the creation of five permanent jobs, or a capital increase in an existing Portuguese company that creates five permanent jobs or maintains ten jobs of which five are permanent, in each case for at least three years.¹ The ten-jobs route sets no capital minimum at all; the jobs are the requirement, reduced to eight in a low-density territory.¹

These are routes for people who will run something. The evidence is heavier and continuing: commercial registry certificates, the contracts, and a Social Security position that AIMA can check at renewal.¹ A business plan that cannot carry the payroll puts the permit at risk at the second-year or fourth-year renewal.

Year five, and what the permit needs then

Permanent residence follows five years of legal residence and, once granted, is not tied to the investment.³ The temporary permit, by contrast, is renewable only while the investment is held.¹ The sequence at year five is therefore: apply for permanent residence while the temporary permit and the investment are both still in place, and exit the investment only afterwards. An applicant who intends to keep renewing the temporary permit instead should ask why, and budget for the investment staying locked.