The Hungarian Residency bond program, popularly known as golden visa scheme was launched in 1 January 2013 against the purchase of national government bonds and was later closed in 31 March 2017. The scheme was first launched for EUR 250,000 investment and later the government increased the investment to EUR 300,000
The Bond scheme required purchase EUR 300,000 worth of Hungarian Government bonds held for 5 years. Additional costs such as Application and Government fee comes around EUR 50,000.
The Bond scheme raised EUR 1.4bn euros and 3,649 temporary residence permits were approved under the scheme, according a recent EU commission report on investor residence schemes.
According to the official statistics, between 2013-2017, under the Golden visa scheme, a total of
- 6,621 requests for residence by investors
- 4,794 applicants were granted permanent residence permits.
- 1,827 applications were refused or turned down
- The scheme was closed after government found the scheme had no economic impact.
The Hungarian government terminated the bond program citing that bond payments resulted in a loss of approximately €192 million for the Hungarian budget. They also suspect that Hungarian elites personally benefited from the program since applicants invested through several offshore companies with opaque ownership structures, rather than directly. Another reason behind suspension was its corruption.
In 2023, the Orban government relaunched the Immigrant investor program under Guest Investor Program for 250,000 euros. Real estate and bonds were excluded under this new scheme
The Bond scheme is closed for applications, no longer available for investors.