In UK, Indian Industry Calls For Pragmatic Visa Regime

09 Jul 2015

A higher level of industry delegation from India is set to call on the UK govt. in order to ensure a pragmatic and flexible visa regime to foster the greater business engagement between both countries.

The delegates belonging to Confederation of Indian industry have plans to raise the issue during their three day to Britain, which opens with annual conference titled “ the future of UK-India Economic Relations in London today.

Chandrajit Banerjee, CII director-general has said that, it is important that the issue of migration has been addressed in the context of the times we are living in.  He added, we wish UK to take pragmatic approach to the issue.

Most Indian companies, who come to UK have added tremendously, not only to economic side but actually have been the largest employers. And it has been employing people from UK, but when it required various special skills, where they need more flexibility.

That is the area where we would really like to see more mobility being allowed and like to bring in more flexibility.   While making reference about ICT (intra-company transfer) route which is used mostly by the Indian companies in order to transfer staff from India to UK.

Further complications could arise as UK does away its Tier 1 points based system. This may affect CCI London office.

He said, London has been one of the oldest offices and we would like to remain fully functional, and in fact expand. We would like to follows the rules. And the rules as they are , we are finding it prohibitive in taking the same route.

The Indian High Commissioner to UK, Ranjan Mathai has echoed the concerns and have highlighted that it was appropriate to make the representations on visa concerns through Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) of the UK Home Office.

John Cridland, CBI(confederation of British industry) director general  has agreed that this issued is real concern but at the same time has stressed that the future of Indian –UK business co-operation to be exciting as well as full of opportunities.

British deputy high commissioner (Mumbai) Kumar Iyer has said, that the  relations between both nations UK and India is genuinely in good place.  During the previous year, UK has invested more in India than Japan and America combined. India invests more in UK than it invests in whole of the rest of Europe combined. 

Mazumder has said, the Indian govt, has come forward and made lot of positive changes which yielded good results on the ground. It is really going to be new India, a different India and it would be growth story of India. We encourage UK companies to advantage of this opportunity.

The delegation would also look at strengthening both Manchester and India ties with business, academic, technology, sports collaboration along with MIDAS, University of Manchester United, Graphene institute and Manchester United. 

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