Team Herald
PANJIM: In what could turn out to be a major setback to the State’s plans to promote Goa as an investment and start-up destination, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Goa Investment Promotion and Facilitation Board (IPB) and Startup Promotion Cell, Vishal Prakash, has resigned from both posts and alleged that he had been ‘bogged down by red-tapism’.
While Prakash was holding full-time charge as CEO IPFB, the post of Startup Promotion Cell was an additional charge.
“I believed that my expertise and skill-sets would bring about a change in the functioning of Goa-IPB which is the showcase organisation for anyone looking to invest in Goa. However, that’s not been the case and I have been bogged down by the same red-tapism that business complain about,” Prakash said in his resignation letter addressed to Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, who is also the chairman of IPB.
Prakash, an investment banker from Mumbai, who took over charge of IPB in August last year, said he believed that Goa wanted to lead the race for transformation as an investor-friendly State. “I genuinely believed that Goa was taking the lead in attracting talent from the private sector and that freshness of thoughts and working styles could transform the below par image of the State from an investors’ perspective,” Prakash said.
Prakash in his letter, has also complained that the government has failed to clear his dues since January. “Please also note that my contract fee has also not been paid to me since January 2019 as a result of some reluctance to pay the GST applicable on the contract fees,” he said, seeking the Chief Minister’s personal intervention in getting his dues cleared at the earliest.
Prakash was appointed as CEO after former CEO Ashton Godinho had resigned in September 2017, on medical grounds.
