The government's strict approval process for granting visas to Chinese nationals and clearing investment plans of Chinese firms is now hurting Indian businesses, with projects getting delayed or even scrapped, multiple industry executives told ET.

Expansion projects of homegrown electronics contract manufacturers - including Dixon Technologies<\/a>' proposed Rs 400-crore unit for manufacturing refrigerators - are impacted due to non-grant or delay in grant of visa to Chinese engineers, they said.

Some of these companies are now sending their technical resources to China and Taiwan in order to get trained for skills like installation of manufacturing lines, executives said.

\"Companies, especially the production-linked incentive (PLI) holders, need some support from the government as far as clearance of visas for Chinese engineers is concerned,\" said Atul<\/a> Lall<\/a>, MD of Dixon Technologies.

CEOs working from China<\/strong>
\"We still need their (Chinese) technical expertise to build our plants and manufacturing infrastructure. Otherwise, this will hurt the Make in India<\/a> ambitions and scaling up by companies,\" Lall said.

The Tatas recently called off a proposed joint venture between the group's air-conditioner manufacturer Voltas<\/a> and Chinese compressor manufacturer Highly International<\/a> since the \"regulatory approvals were not forthcoming\", as Voltas said in a stock market notice.

The joint venture was to invest about Rs 500 crore to manufacture inverter AC compressors. Shanghai Highly Group<\/a> is one of the largest compressor manufacturers in the world.

Another major investment proposal for manufacturing expansion by a leading Chinese electronics company is yet to get the green light, people cited above said.