Nepal Investor Visa

The route this record is named for does not appear in the Department of Immigration catalogue: nine visa categories are listed and none is called "Investment Express"; the visa information page does not mention that name either.

The route that does exist with a money threshold is the residential visa, and the threshold is a minimum investment of USD 100,000 or the equivalent in an industrial enterprise in Nepal.

What is worth noting is that investment is only one of four doors into the same category: the other three carry no money threshold and turn on standing.

Persons of international reputation; persons capable of rendering outstanding contribution to the economic, social or cultural growth of Nepal; and any foreigner intending to spend life in Nepal without carrying on any business.

That fourth door has its own money conditions: a bank statement of USD 20,000, a certificate of regular income of at least USD 20,000 a year, and proof of being aged 60 or over or retired.

The Business Visa sets no threshold for eligibility at all; there the size of the investment only decides the fee

Two outcomes of different rank, and neither carries the name "Investment Express". The first is the business visa, a branch of the non-tourist group, available to investors and businesspersons investing or undertaking business in Nepal.

What is worth recording is that it is issued unlike any other non-tourist branch: granted in one go for a term of at least one month up to one year, or for five years at a time, and always with multiple re-entry regardless of the period.

The second is the residential visa, that is actual residence status rather than a branch of a working visa.

Both are gated at a door that sits outside the immigration authority: the file must carry a recommendation letter from the Department of Industry or the concerned line agency, and for the business visa also a Foreign Investment Acceptance letter issued by that same Department.

Which means the immigration decision follows a decision about investment taken in another ministry

The Department of Immigration publishes a processing time for the residential visa, and it is unusually short against every other route in this dataset: a new application is issued the next day, counted from the approval of the Home Ministry; a renewal is issued the same day.

Both figures apply to both limbs of the category — the investor limb from USD 100,000 and the limb for a foreigner living in Nepal without carrying on business.

But the scope of the figure has to be read correctly: it measures from Home Ministry approval to issue, not from filing to Home Ministry approval, and the authority does not publish the second interval. For the Business Visa no processing time is published at all

There is no minimum number of days of presence, on either route. The residence conditions are set in three other directions. First, term and right of movement: the business visa is granted from one month to one year, or five years at a time, with unlimited multiple re-entry — so the holder is not obliged to stay in order to keep it alive.

Second, personal conditions on the limb of the residential visa for someone living in Nepal without carrying on business:

Proof of being aged 60 or over or retired, a bank statement of USD 20,000, a certificate showing regular annual income of no less than USD 20,000, a character certificate, a no-objection letter from the embassy, and a health certificate issued by the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital.

Third, continuing conditions at renewal: the non-business limb must file an expenditure statement of USD 20,000, while the investor limb must file an industry monitoring and supervision report together with a progress report of the company

Dependants may accompany, and that is the wording of the Department of Industry, the body issuing the recommendation letter without which the Department of Immigration will not grant the visa:

Foreign investors and their authorised representative and their dependants are granted a business visa for up to five years at a time on the recommendation of the Department.

The criteria for the period are as set by the Department, and the parameters considered include the level of investment, financial performance, employment generation, income tax paid and the area of investment.

The application for the recommendation letter carries a distinct item, a certificate of relationship with the dependants, so accompanying persons must evidence the family tie. Which ties are accepted, however, no page states.

The residential visa route is wholly silent on accompanying persons:

A foreign investor making an investment equivalent to more than one hundred thousand US dollars at one time in convertible foreign currency is granted a residential visa on the recommendation of the Department, for one year at a time, and that sentence mentions no one else.

The Department of Immigration page describing both routes likewise makes no mention of dependants; the word occurs on that page only in the section on the study visa. The business visa fee table is banded by level of investment and carries no line charged per dependant.

This is a matter that could not be researched rather than a silence in the text: the two documents holding the definition are the Immigration Rules 2051 and the Immigration Procedure 2065, the first of which uses a legacy eight-bit font and yields only garbage, while the second is an image scan yielding no usable text.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the Nepal passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a Nepal passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the Nepal passport reaches 29 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The immigration authority does not set out the tax position of the visa holder; tax appears here in the role of a document to be filed, and it appears in three separate places. The business visa requires the latest tax clearance.

The working visa requires two tax clearances at once — that of the hiring organisation, and that of the applicant at renewal where the applicant pays tax individually.

The investor limb of the residential visa requires a tax clearance at renewal.

Beyond that, the document bundle for both routes requires copies of the PAN and VAT registration certificates of the business. That is, tax compliance in Nepal is policed by requiring proof that it has been discharged at each application or renewal, rather than by any separate tax provision for foreign nationals

Two pages of the same authority carry two different fee tables for the business visa, differing both in the amounts and in where the bands break.

The visa information page uses three bands, with fees in USD:

The fees and documents page bands it differently, again in USD:

Both are recorded because nothing on the site establishes which table is the later one.

For the residential visa the two pages do not conflict: the investor limb costs USD 200 a year on first grant and USD 100 a year on renewal; the limb for living in Nepal without business costs USD 700 a year on first grant, USD 1,200 on renewal, and USD 100 for holders from before 1998