Singapore Global Investor Programme

The Global Investor Programme (GIP) grants Singapore Permanent Residence, not citizenship, to investors who commit at least S$10 million to a Singapore business, S$25 million to a GIP-select fund, or who establish a Singapore single family office with at least S$200 million under management of which at least S$50 million must be transferred into Singapore and deployed there. It is administered by Contact Singapore, a division of the Economic Development Board (EDB), while the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) issues the Approval-in-Principle, the Final Approval and the Re-Entry Permit.

The capital is not the gate. The GIP carries a corporate qualifying test, and most people who could write the cheque do not qualify. An Established Business Owner must run a company with turnover of at least S$200 million in the preceding year and on average over three years, hold at least 30 per cent of it if privately held, and operate in an EDB listed industry. A Next Generation Business Owner faces a S$500 million turnover test on the family company, and a Founder of a Fast Growth Company must have founded a non-listed company valued at S$500 million or more with venture capital or private equity backing. A Family Office Principal needs net investible assets of at least S$200 million, real estate excluded. An EDB interview is mandatory: this is a programme you are assessed into, not one you buy into.

What the three routes require

Option A asks for at least S$10 million in a new business entity, or the expansion of an existing business operation, in Singapore. You submit a five-year plan assessed on feasibility, your role in growing the company and the creation of local jobs, and must hold at least 30 per cent of that company and sit on its management team. Paid-up capital already in it can count toward the condition.

Option B asks for S$25 million into a GIP-select fund investing in Singapore-based companies, paid from your personal bank account, in your sole name, with a bank registered in Singapore. EDB states that choosing a fund is your decision alone and that inclusion on its list is not an endorsement, so fund-level charges are yours to check.

Option C is the family office route, and the only one open to Family Office Principals. Offshore assets can count toward the S$200 million under management, provided at least S$50 million has been transferred into and held in Singapore by the time your Approval-in-Principle is issued. That S$50 million must then be deployed into EDB specified investments within 12 months of Final Approval and maintained for as long as the Re-Entry Permit runs.

The application fee is S$20,000, payable in a single transaction before submission and non-refundable whatever the outcome, with transfer charges borne by you. Beyond that, the government cost is the qualifying investment itself, and unlike a contribution-based citizenship programme that capital remains your asset, subject to the conditions below.

The conditions that catch people out

Approval is the beginning of the obligation. Permanent Residence is formalised with a Re-Entry Permit valid for five years, and without a valid permit you lose your status the moment you leave Singapore. A five-year renewal requires that you met your option's investment conditions, and its economic test, and that you or all your dependants resided in Singapore for more than half the time:

• Option A: the company must employ at least 30 people in Singapore, at least half of them Singapore Citizens, including at least 10 incremental employees.
• Option B: the S$25 million fund investment must be maintained.
• Option C: the family office must employ at least five incremental family office professionals, at least three of them Singapore Citizens, in legal, tax, investment or philanthropy roles, and the S$50 million deployment must be maintained.

Meet only one limb, the economic condition or the residence condition, and a three-year renewal is available instead. The renewal window opens three months before expiry and a lapsed permit cannot be renewed late. There is no fixed annual day count while you hold the status, but there is a real reckoning at year five, which anyone planning to live outside Singapore should weigh before applying.

Family scope is generous inside a narrow definition. Your spouse and unmarried children below the age of 21 at the date of submission are included on the same application and obtain Permanent Residence, with no increase in the threshold. Parents, and children who have turned 21, cannot be included, though they may apply for a Long Term Visit Pass tied to your Re-Entry Permit. One consequence is better said plainly than discovered later: male children who obtain Permanent Residence as dependants become liable for National Service.

How long it takes

EDB states that a GIP application takes approximately 12 months to process, assuming complete documents and subject to due diligence. The sequence is fixed: forms and fee, an EDB interview, then an Approval-in-Principle valid for six months from ICA. You invest within that window and submit evidence with the signed Investment Undertaking, and once EDB verifies it ICA issues Final Approval. Permanent Residence must then be formalised within 12 months of that letter. Realistically this is a two-year project.

Tax

Singapore taxes individuals on a largely territorial basis. Resident income tax is progressive from zero on the first S$20,000 of chargeable income to 24 per cent above S$1,000,000 on the IRAS schedule for the 2026 year of assessment, and tax residency generally arises at 183 days or more in a calendar year. There is no capital gains tax, and no inheritance or estate tax. Most foreign-sourced income is not taxed on receipt, subject to specific rules. General information, not tax advice.

Permanent residence, and the question of a passport

Permanent Residence under the GIP confers the right to live, work and run a business in Singapore without a separate work pass, indefinite in principle and conditioned in practice on renewing the Re-Entry Permit. What it does not do is hand you a passport. Naturalisation is a separate application governed by ICA, at the authorities' discretion and outside the programme's terms, so anyone whose objective is a second passport should treat it as a distinct and uncertain later step, and take advice on Singapore's treatment of dual nationality first. The Ministry of Trade and Industry has told Parliament that permanent residences granted under the GIP over the decade to 2025 ran to the hundreds rather than the thousands: a deliberately small, selectively administered programme.

Who it suits, and who it does not

The GIP suits an established business owner or family office principal who genuinely intends to put part of the enterprise into Singapore, wants a stable, common-law base in Asia with excellent banking and schooling, and can live with a real job-creation or residence test at year five. For the family office principal, Option C is purpose-built.

It does not suit a passive investor seeking a status to hold quietly from abroad, nor anyone who needs certainty of approval, since the assessment is discretionary and the S$20,000 fee is lost if the answer is no, nor anyone below the turnover and asset thresholds whatever their liquidity, nor anyone whose objective is a passport. Those investors are better served by the wider field of residency by investment programmes, such as the United Arab Emirates Golden Visa or New Zealand, or, where a second nationality is the goal, by the citizenship by investment programmes.

If Singapore is the right answer for your family and your business, the work begins long before the forms. Arrange a complimentary consultation with Mirabello Consultancy and we will assess your qualifying profile honestly, say so if you do not meet the criteria, and map the route that fits.