Govt unveils digital visa sponsorship letter module for production-related employment

New Delhi, Dec 18 (IANS) The government has launched an online module for Indian companies to generate sponsorship letters for inviting foreign professionals for production related activities under the e-Production Investment Business Visa (e-B-4 Visa).

According to Commerce Ministry, the launch of this digital platform is a part of a series of reforms that the government has instituted under the business visa regime for improving the ease of doing business in India.

“Processes have been streamlined with simpler forms and recommendation requirement of the Line Ministry has been done away with. With this module, Indian companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) can instantly generate sponsorship letters for inviting foreign professionals for production related activities under the e-B-4 Visa category on NSWS,” the ministry said.

The auto population of data and automatic authentication through existing data bases like MCA, GSTN etc. have eliminated the requirement of approval of line ministry.

“The unique ID of the generated sponsorship letter will be referred by foreign professional when he applies for Visa on the e-Visa portal, where the module has been integrated with NSWS through API,” the ministry further informed.

In August this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a Circular for resolving certain issues related to employment visa, business visa and e-PLI business.

As part of this circular, two activities which were earlier covered under the employment visa namely, Foreign nationals coming for installation and commissioning of equipment — as part of contract of supply of equipment and for which Indian companies pay fees or royalty, are now brought under the business visa regime.

Further, a new sub-category of “Production Investment Visa” has been created under the Business Visa regime and called the “B-4 Visa” for enabling foreign subject matter specialists/engineers/technical people being engaged by Indian companies.

Moreover, the existing e-PLI business visa was dispensed with. The Ministry of Home Affairs also made amendments to relevant chapters of the Visa Manual, 2019.

As part of this reform, this Production Investment Visa will be issued as an e-visa and has to be applied for in the online Visa portal.

Further, to facilitate the Visa application process for e-B-4 visa, Indian companies shall generate sponsorship letter digitally.

For enabling this facilitation digitally, DPIIT had launched the e-Production Investment Business registration module on the National Single Window System (NSWS), which can be availed by PLI as well as non-PLI businesses.

—IANS

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