India - China: Relations And Developments-2

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[url="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-12/india-s-visa-rules-out-of-line-for-companies-seeking-expats.html"]India’s Visa Rules ‘Out of Line’ for Companies Seeking Expats[/url]

The government toughened regulations for foreign workers last year after discovering that about 40,000 Chinese building power plants used business visas instead of employment visas, skirting taxes and taking jobs from locals. The crackdown restricted employment visas to skilled people in senior jobs and limited foreigners to 1 percent of a project’s workforce.



Building Power Plants



India is attracting foreign workers facing jobless rates of 9.7 percent in the U.S. and 10 percent in the 16-nation euro region. India doesn’t regularly release unemployment data.

Little attention was paid to visas in the past decade as the government sought investments from abroad. The number of registered foreign nationals more than doubled to 351,999 in 2007 from 137,474 the year before, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Home Affairs Web site.



Three power plants being built by billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power Ltd. placed orders with Shanghai Electric Group Co. Lanco Infratech Ltd. awarded a contract for its 1,015- megawatt plant to Deyang, China-based Dongfang Electric Corp.

“It has come to the notice of the government that a large number of foreign nationals, including Chinese, were coming for execution of projects/contracts in India on Business Visas instead of the Employment Visas,” Harish Rawat, junior minister for labor, said Dec. 16 in a written response to lawmakers.



Foreign workers without employment visas aren’t paying taxes, said Amitabh Singh, a partner at Ernst & Young Pvt. in New Delhi.