Dear Sirs/Madams,

The SEF portal has been down for a few weeks now. As you may be aware, the Portuguese government was unable to approve the state budget for 2022 and therefore the country held general elections to elect a new government, on January 31st. Since the state budget was not approved and some of the GV program features arise from the state budget each year, the submissions were halted in anticipation for the new government and the new state budget.

This information was verified by Mercan Properties directly with the previous government – that is the winning party, with overall majority, in this new election.

Regarding your GV application with Mercan Properties:

i) The PT GV is still up and running although currently no one can make submissions at SEF in PT – residential, commercial, investment funds, no one at all;

ii) The new government should be indicated on the last week of February and, as we have been informed, Mercan Properties will continue its efforts to have this issued resolved as soon as possible;

iii) In the meantime, the IAS team has created a procedure to open the investors file at the portal – which is possible and send all the documents to SEF to try and avoid that the documents are considered expired during this period.

This is, of course, a stressful situation, albeit a temporary one. In any case, IAS will keep all the investors aware about any new information that may arise. Kindly feel free to reach out to your case responsible should you require any further clarification.