Objective
To facilitate investment by foreign residents into the Australian venture capital market and thereby further develop the venture capital industry.
Significance for Australia
The Australian Government introduced the Venture Capital Regime in December 2002 to encourage the supply of overseas investment to the Australian venture capital industry.
The following amendments were implemented on 21 June 2007 to improve the efficiency of the VCLP scheme.
- allowing investment into unit trusts and investment by way of convertible notes (that are predominantly equity instruments);
- allowing a carve out of up to 20% of the partnership's committed capital from the investment requirement that the investee entity must be an Australian resident and more than 50% of the assets and more than 50% of the employees must be in Australia at the time of the initial investment;
- removing restrictions on the country of residence of the investors (limited partners); and
- allowing the partnership and the general partner to be residents of any country that has a double tax agreement with Australia.
Departmental role and current achievements
To access the concessional taxation arrangements, a VCLP must be registered with Innovation Australia 
(the Board). AusIndustry, a division of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Research and Science, works with the Venture Capital Committee of the Board to assist the Board in the delivery of the program.
At 30 June 2007 there were 20 fully registered VCLPs (which reported almost $2,830 million in capital commitments) and five conditionally registered VCLPs.
Targets for 2008-09
For further information
Phone: AusIndustry hotline, 13 28 46 (within Australia)
Email: hotline@ausindustry.gov.au
Web: www.ausindustry.gov.au
May 2008