Brief guide to Indonesian retirement visa

With Indonesian retirement visas, people are allowed to live in this Asian country as long as they want and leave and enter whenever they like. Holders of this visa can hire employers, open a bank account and avail other benefits.

To be eligible for a Retirement Visa of Indonesia, applicants must be aged 55 and above, and they should have retired. Holders of these visas are not allowed to work. They need to possess life insurance and health insurance, which they can obtain from the chosen provider, but it should cover Indonesia as well.

Holders of these visas may need time to choose where they want to reside, and they must sign a lease agreement for a minimum of one year. It is also mandatory for them to hire a maid.

Holders of these visas should ensure that they have adequate cash to support themselves and their dependents while they reside in Indonesia. The law, however, requires that they get income from investments or pensions of minimum $18,000 per year. Proof of this income also needs to be provided, says Indonesia Expat.

People can obtain these visas after they apply through the Ministry of Tourism, and they can be issued through agencies known as sponsors, who need to be officially appointed and recognized. The retirement visa can only be obtained if people apply through these sponsors and their associates to the Ministry of Tourism.

To obtain this visa, three steps are involved. The first step involves selecting an accredited agency and seeking their help to get all the required documentation ready. Once the applicants get the entire documentation ready, it will take agencies about a fortnight to review them and submit applications.

Approved applicants will receive a confirmation, after which they are required to take these with their passports and letters that sponsors have provided to their chosen embassies. They will then be needed to provide their passport size photographs and fill in the forms. Finally, the embassy will then issue the applicants' Visas of Indonesia.

After visa holders arrive in Indonesia, their agents will convert their visas to KITAS (Temporary Residence Permits), which will allow them to stay in Indonesia as retired people for one year.

Besides KITAS, they will get SKPPSs and KTTs (certificates of temporary residency registration), STMs (police reports) and SKLD (police cards).

Initially, it is possible to extend retirement KITAS yearly for a maximum period of five years. After that, they will be entitled to apply for permanent stay permits (KITAPs).

If the retirement visa holders want to leave Indonesia in between, they will need to apply for ERPs (Exit and Re-entry Permits), which have a validity of three months to allow them to leave the country once, or MERPs (Multiple Exit and Re-entry Permits), having a validity of six months that will allow them to exit and re-enter as many times as they want. In case, they wish to leave Indonesia permanently, they would need to apply for EPOs (Exit Permits Only).

If you are looking to Migrate to Indonesia, talk to Y-Axis, the world’s no.1 immigration and visa consultancy, to apply for a relevant visa.