NICOSIA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Applications under Cyprus' investment program which entitles those who invest at least 2.5 million euros to obtain an EU passport have marked a slowdown since May, when new stricter criteria were introduced, an official of the Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA) said on Friday.
CIPA President Michael Michael was quoted by StockwatchCy news outlet as saying that "since new criteria were applied in summer the inflow of applications has dropped," but added that investment activity has not been affected to any considerable degree.
Michael mentioned several reasons for the slowdown, including transparency as to the source of the money to be invested, a time consuming process that requires a Schengen visa and a due diligence by specialized firms.
Latest data published by StockwatchCy showed that applications in the first 10 months of 2019 are very close to the number of applications submitted in 2018.
Up to the end of October, 550 applications were received, compared with a record number of 581 for the whole of 2018.
Officials of organizations directly involved in the program, such as land developers, lawyers firms and auditors said the slowdown of the last few months was mostly due to the fact that the large majority of applications were submitted within a month, as applicants tried to beat the new strict criteria after the government announced in February that they would come into force on May 15.
But they also said that they doubt whether investments-for-passports would ever return to previous years' levels.
The program, which was introduced in 2012, drew up to now just under 1,900 applications with investments of about 6.5 billion euros to the Cypriot economy.
