How long to get a Residency permit ?

All I can tell you is that we submitted ours at the beginning of February and are still waiting.

Thank you for your reply. Sadly it is not good news for us. We are about to complete on a property and we were wondering how long before we get the visa, so that we can ship our belongings with the visa and therefore no dutie to be paid at customs. It looks like we will be owning an empty property for a while before we can live in it, with our belongings not being able to arrive. Do you have any experience of this  dilemma ?

@info6760

Hi, you kindly replied to a question which I posted in May. So far it has taken us a year to get nowhere.  We signed the original promise of sale to purchase an apartment last June. Then the building work has been delayed, new contracts written 3 times . No response from the EDB since February , for the letter of approval. Now our PCR is again null and void as the date for hearing from the EDB has passed.  We are so close but yet still so far away from living our dream in Mauritius.

Please could you let me know if you have heard back from the EDB yet ?

Can anyone else let me know of their experiences ?

We are at the end of our patience and thinking of maybe retiring in a different country as our experience so far has been incredibly frustrating !

@fionajacombs  thank you for this information, sad though it is. The EDB website makes things look easy for the PDS route, but I can see this is ridiculously complicated due to several factors.

I was just wondering, in your particular case, if you were 50 or above, would it be easier to get the retirement permit so that you could visit and stay as long as you want, while overseeing the acquisition of property. You could then get the residency via the property acquisition route anyway and get your retirement permit changed. Retirement permit does not mean you have to spend all your time in Mauritius, as long as you meet the criteria of age and money transferred.

Best of luck.

@Tookays

Thank you for your reply.

In hindsight,  Yes, it would have been the best idea. This last year has been incredibly frustrating.

We signed a promise of sale on a property that was being built, this time last year ! Delays with the build, agent ,Notary etc, our application was not submitted until February this year,  by the developer as the agent had failed to do it. The property is now ready, but we are still waiting for the letter of approval from the EDB. Then we need our residence permit so that we can ship our belongings.

I cannot seem to find the answer anywhere to ,

a)  how long do the EDB normally take to issue the approval  ?

b)   how long do the EDB take to issue the Residence permit once the approval has been given and the property has been purchased ?

if anyone has any experience of this , please let me know.

Sadly nothing positive to add - a further month has passed and we have still heard nothing. In the meantime the completion of our property has also been significantly delayed.

I emailed the EDB asking if they could advise on the status of our application. I had read receipts from 4 different individuals there, but none of them have actually replied to my mail, so we're none the wiser.

I remain hopeful it will be sorted eventually, but it is frustrating, and I empathise with your concerns. Ours is a recognised PDS scheme so I (wrongly) thought the process would be fairly quick and painless!

@info6760

Thank you for replying. At least it is not just us ! It seems that we are not the only people who are just waiting daily for a response.  The frustration of not knowing, when we will know, is driving us crazy.  Also, not being able to find out the answers to our questions is so annoying too. One year of living in limbo is testing our patience. Good luck with your progress and your property build.

I have to say, this is not encouraging to read.  I had thought this process would be relatively smooth given the websites and information required.

@fionajacombs

you can message me . I have some helpful information

@shikhaluchun26

Hi, any information you have will be greatly received 🙏🏼

@fionajacombs

have you got your residence permit yet?

@Alex C2 no not yet !

@fionajacombs  so sorry to hear this. Awful time for you. Fingers crossed it all happens soon now.

Thought another update might be useful for some ... so, after multiple requests, the EDB finally looked at our application, which we submitted to them with all the required documentation at the beginning of February. And has now informed us that the medical examinations we underwent at the end of January are no longer valid and we have to do them again! Utterly shambolic. I really hope @fionajacombs fares better than us ... good luck.

@info6760

We had a similar problem, but with our police clearances.   We finalised all our documentation in Jan this year (3rd police clearance after the other all expired after six months) and then they informed me that our "request to enter Mauritius" are outdated. 

We submitted new requests on the 5th of April and eventually received our Permits on the 22nd of July.  .

The new challenge is to get our ID cards.  I phone on a weekly basis and every week they tell me it should be ready next week.

Now it seems as though they have a problem with the printer

Good luck, and we hold thumbs that you too receive your pemits soon.

Hello Everyone, an update on our situation so far. We finally got our LOA in July, as our property was finally ready, we decided to come to Mauritius to see if being here would speed up the processes. so we arrived late July, with 2 suitcases each, stayed in an Airbnb for a month, signed the deed of sale at the Notary’s office a week ago and moved into our property last Monday, 26 August 2024. 14 months after starting the process and paying our deposit to the Notarys office. We have bought a bed, a sofa, a TV and some basic kitchen necessities,  basically we are camping in our new home. so the property will be registered in our name next week, then we can get our electricity bill in our name, which means we can get the TV sorted and also more importantly, start the residence permit application. When we finally receive it we can get our belongings sent over which are in storage in the UK. We are estimating that in 6 months time we should have our permit and our belongings shipped. Fingers crossed !!

@Fiona - that's great news! Just hoping your residence permit doesn't take as long as ours ... now into our 7th month of waiting, having had to purchase new medical certificates and other documents when we were told that the original ones were out of date because they had sat in the EDB's in-tray since the beginning of February. From Charmaine's experience outlined above it could take another 3 months of waiting from re-submission. I won't be holding my breath. It's pretty shocking. The EDB holds seminars and events all over the world trying to persuade people to invest in and retire to Mauritius, but can't seem to manage what should be a very straightforward process.