South Africa to Offer Points-Based and Nomad Visas in 30 Days
(Bloomberg) -- South Africa plans to roll out a points-based system to issue work visas as well as permits for people who want to live in the nation while working remotely for organizations based elsewhere within 30 days.
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Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said his department and the South African Revenue Service have ironed out the tax implications of the new systems, and he received the regulations for both visa classes on Tuesday.
“A person who is employed and paid in another country will now be able to move to sunny South Africa to spend all of their dollars, yen, euros, pounds or renminbi right here,” he said in a speech. Nomad workers only need to register with the tax agency if they spend more than six months of the year in the country, he added.
“Our new remote-working visa must be one of the best deals I’ve ever come across,” the minister said. “South Africa carries none of the cost of employing these nomads, yet we reap all of the benefits.”
Schreiber is a member of the Democratic Alliance, which finished second in May 29 elections that failed to produce an outright winner. He got one of six cabinet posts allocated to the party after President Cyril Ramaphosa set up a coalition government.
Under Schreiber’s leadership, the department is overhauling byzantine visa-application processes that can extend beyond a year and contributed to a backlog of hundreds of thousands of requests — which has now been halved. People demanding rulings on their submissions have mired Home Affairs in lawsuits.
The presidency and the country’s main business organizations have flagged the regime as a hurdle to economic growth that’s averaged less than 1% over the past decade — insufficient to cut a 33.5% unemployment rate, among the world’s highest.
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Attracting just 11,000 more tertiary-educated workers annually would add 1.2% to South Africa’s economic growth rate and increase the tax take by 1.3% a year, Schreiber said, citing data from the Food Poverty Research Institute.
“The points-based work visa is going to revolutionize the South African economy,” he said. “Gone will be the days when highly skilled workers had no pathway to help build this country if their skills happened to not be included in an arbitrary critical-skills list.”
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