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First Published August 13, 2014 – Still Relevant

Extend a Hong Kong business investment visa?  Not so long ago the Hong Kong Immigration Department made life quite easy for certain entrepreneurs when it came time to extend a business investment visa…

QUESTION  OF  THE  WEEK

For extending my Hong Kong investment visa for the first renewal, do you recommend submitting any other materials aside from the cover letter, employment letter and the ID91?

ANSWER

Getting a business investment visa extended can be a challenging, or it can be a very simple process. It all depends on the circumstances of your initial approval, your last extension and where your business is today.

The essential starting documentation for an extension to a business investment visa is the simple cover letter explaining that you’re still in business and you’re confirming that you’re engaged in the business.

The ID 91, which is the extension application form, and also a copy of the updated business Registration certificate which tells the immigration department that the business still is ongoing. The question is asked though is if you need to supply any other information to assist the processing of that application.

Now normally it all depends on whether or not your last extension was subject to business review or indeed if it’s your first extension, if your original approval was subject to business review. This can be a double edged sword if you are subject to business review, because what will happen is the immigration department will want to see proof of the nature and the type of the business that you’ve been engaged in over the previous twelve months.

And that’s so that they can be reassured that you continue to satisfy the approvability test showing that you are making a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong. So in pursuing this particular objective, what you need to do is to anticipate the kind of information the Immigration Department would be asking for at the time that they respond to your initial request for the extension.

These documents include proof that you’ve been employing local people through the provision of MPF documentation, proof that you’ve got a properly set up office through the provision of a stamped tenancy agreement and also a copy of your management accounts or your audited financial statement (if you’ve completed an audit since your last extension was approved).

By looking at these documents, the Immigration Department will be able to satisfy themselves that you can or are indeed making a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong. Whether you should apply with these documents from the get go, or whether you should wait for the Immigration Department to come back to you after the application has commenced, is really a personal decision.

My advice and what we do for our clients is to always anticipate that every investment visa extension will be subject to some kind of review of one sort or another. And in this regard, by submitting the information in advance of these formal requests of the Immigration Department, you can expect to reduce the timeline to the formal consideration process, normally from what should be about a two and a half or a three-week exercise, potentially down to one week. This means that once the Immigration Department have received all the information from you in advance, they don’t have to go through the correspondence exercise, and you then don’t have to running around, try to find all the information that they’re asking for.

Thus, my advice is definitely submitting the application for your extension with a full portfolio of information, and not wait for the Immigration Department to come back and raise these requisitions that you have to answer in response.

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