Hong Kong’s New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (New CIES) has received more than 3,300 applications representing approximately HK$99 billion (US$12.6 billion) in anticipated investment, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui disclosed on April 13.
He made the remarks at the Hong Kong Investment Funds Association (HKIFA) 40th anniversary cocktail reception.
The figures represent a modest gain from the program’s two-year report in early March, which recorded 3,166 applications and HK$95 billion at the end of February. At least 134 new applications arrived in the six weeks since, a pace well below the roughly 190 per month that characterized the program’s second year.
Hui provided no updated breakdown of investment allocation or approvals. When InvestHK last disclosed detailed figures in early March, verified capital stood at HK$55.6 billion across 1,762 approved applicants. Funds authorized by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) absorbed the largest share at 38.6%, with equities at 29% and debt securities at 9.5%.
Liquidity, Not Productivity
The headline numbers, however, obscure a structural limitation. Stephen Barnes, founder and managing director of Hong Kong Visa Centre and TG 2050, argues that the program’s economic contribution is thinner than the capital figures suggest.
“The New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme brings money in, but not necessarily into Hong Kong’s real economy,” Barnes told IMI.
He notes that converting foreign currency into HK$30 million produces a financial account inflow that supports the Hong Kong dollar and lifts reserve figures. Yet if intermediaries then deploy those foreign currencies offshore, net capital retention is diluted.
He explains that the investment itself flows overwhelmingly into secondary markets. “What you’re really seeing is secondary market activity, buying listed securities, not fresh capital formation,” Barnes observed. “At best, NCIES inflates asset prices. It’s liquidity, not productivity.”
His framing reduces the program’s economic logic to a blunt proposition: “At best, you’re lending HK$30 million to the issuers in Hong Kong.” Without a mechanism channeling capital into primary issuance or productive sectors, he contends, the distinction between financial engineering and genuine investment collapses.
One investment category that might have directed capital into the real economy continues to attract zero interest: luxury residential property, which the government added as a qualifying option in October 2024 and made more accessible by cutting the qualifying price from HK$50 million to HK$30 million in September 2025. As of February, not a single applicant had deployed capital there.
Still Short of Target
Since its March 2024 relaunch, the New CIES has not approached the government’s original projection of 4,000 annual applications and HK$120 billion in yearly investment. Year one produced 918 applications. The second brought 2,248, powered by reforms that cut the asset-holding verification period from two years to six months and permitted joint family asset ownership toward the HK$30 million threshold.
Even at year two’s elevated pace, the program would track toward roughly 2,300 annual submissions, barely half the target. Early indications from year three suggest further deceleration.
Chief Executive John Lee, speaking the following day at the HSBC Global Investment Summit, described Hong Kong as a “safe haven for capital.” Single-family offices in the city now exceed 3,380, he reported, a 25% increase over two years.
Integrating these offices into the CIES framework has been a recurring policy goal. The January 2025 changes added family office structures as qualifying investments, and a March 2026 amendment removed the six-month incorporation floor for holding companies.
