Photo:
The government is stepping up efforts to get more high value investors to apply for New Zealand residency.
The investment arm of Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) was launching its first major piece of international marketing to support the government's Active Investor Migrant Programme, which had been previously criticised for attracting too few applicants.
NZTE investment general manager Dylan Lawrence said it was hosting a gathering of up to 200 high value investors in San Francisco today at 1pm NZT in an effort to attract more rich investors to New Zealand.
He said the visa programme had already received 19 applications from rich investors since it was introduced last year, with seven more applications in the works.
"Bear in mind it took three years under the previous regime for us to get 29 Investor One (visa) applications.
"We're moving from a large number of applications to a smaller number of higher quality ones.
"I think if we could bring in 30 or so every year, that's 300-plus million of new money into the economy - into the productive part of our economy every year.
"That is a substantial amount of money."
The Active Investor Plus visa had a slightly different process to other visas as it was up to NZTE to determine what was an acceptable investment for applicants.
Lawrence said active investment included direct investments, managed funds, listed equities or philanthropy.
He said the upcoming event was being supported by New Zealand companies.
"As a country, we're very good at the number eight wire mentality.
"We've been very lucky that a number of our food and beverage companies have donated all the food and drinks for tonight free of charge.
"And we've managed to be gifted the event space, so we are very good as a country at doing things - almost like we're operating out of our garage."