KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) has garnered almost RM1bil of net income in the past year alone, despite the imposition of tighter conditions on applicants, says Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
Saifuddin told Dewan Rakyat that from 2015 to 2019, or prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were a total of 3,900 applicants, resulting in an injection of RM958mil of funds into the banking system.
Meanwhile, Saifuddin said more recently, a total of 375 MM2H programme applications have been approved, while another 800 applicants received pre-approvals after passing all the required screenings.
"Each of them is to put RM1mil in fixed deposit. That is RM800mil in our banking system," he said that under the new requirement, each applicant has to put in RM1mil in fixed deposit.
"This one year alone, (overall collections) has reached almost RM1bil compared to the previous five years (2015-2019)," he said, noting that the tightening of conditions was meant to attract the ‘better’ kind of applicants.
"There is a drop in the number of applications now, but we tightened the conditions to go for 'high quality' (applicants)," he said in reply to a supplementary question from Datuk Seri Hasni Mohammad (BN-Simpang Renggam) during Question Time.
He was responding to a question raised by Hasni who asked if there was a drop of MM2H participants due to a change of government policy that is contributing to property overhangs in certain states, including in Johor.
In August 2021, the government announced 10 new conditions for those interested in the programme, including having RM1.5mil of liquid assets, RM40,000 monthly offshore income, RM1mil in a Malaysian fixed deposit account, and an additional RM50,000 per dependent.
Existing MM2H pass holders only need to comply with two out of the 10 new conditions: an increase in fee for the pass, from RM90 to RM500 per year, and the requirement to stay in the country for a minimum of 90 days a year.
Saifuddin said that the reason for tighter conditions was to improve security lapses under the previous programme.
"All of the applicants must go through the security vetting, because previously, there were some security lapses under this programme.
"Some of them were involved in spying activities, so we need to tighten it," he said.
At the same time, he said the conditions under the programme remain competitive against other countries.
"This is because our intention is to attract high-quality participants and those with high expertise that are needed in the country," he said.
Despite the changes, the figures clearly showed that the response had been good for the MM2H programme, considering the recovery phase after Covid-19 pandemic and the country experiencing a better political stability, argued Saifuddin.
