The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has unveiled a new immigration program, known as the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, to attract investments from overseas.

Under the scheme, people from overseas aged 18 or above are eligible to apply for Hong Kong permanent resident status. But they must invest no less than 6.5 million HK dollars in permissible assets.

As most of the permissible assets are required to be in the form of real estate, people in the property sector are believed to be the main beneficiaries of the scheme. As of Monday morning, the Immigration Department of the HKSAR government had already received four formal applications and more than 70 enquires.

It is estimated that by the end of the year, there will be about 1,000 applications, which will bring in around 5 billion Hong Kong dollars for the property sector.

As foreign exchange control is implemented on the mainland, the scheme will not apply to all mainlanders. But others, including Chinese nationals who have obtained permanent resident status in a foreign country with proven re-entry facilities, will benefit from this scheme.

(CCTV.com October 28, 2003)