In March 2015, the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Honourable Mr. Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo, announced in his budget speech, the advent of 13 employment-rich mega infrastructure projects that will be developed across Mauritius under the Smart City Scheme (SCS). While 8 of these ambitious projects will be designed as “Smart Cities” that will revolutionise our whole way of living, the other remaining 5 “technopole” projects will be developed on a smaller scale and will be geared mainly at providing high-tech industrial research and development facilities.
In the same speech, the Minister conveyed the government’s objective of streamlining and harmonizing the Integrated Resort Scheme (IRS) and Real Estate Scheme (RES) by replacing the IRS and the RES with a new Property Development Scheme (PDS).
The Investment Promotion (Smart City Scheme) Regulations 2015 and the Investment Promotion (Property Development Scheme) Regulations 2015 were both enacted and promulgated on 12th June 2015.
The two new regulations provide an enabling framework and a package of attractive fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to investors. Similar to the previous IRS/RES, Permanent Residence permits are available to non-citizens for an acquisition of property of at least USD 500,000 under both PDS and SCS. In addition, a non citizen who has resided in Mauritius for a continuous period of 2 years and invested at least USD 5 million under the SCS will be eligible to apply for Mauritius Citizenship.
