Panaji: A month after Goa's leading industrialist claimed that ease of doing business was at its lowest ebb in the coastal state, Vishal Prakash, CEO of Goa's Investment Promotion Board late on Tuesday, resigned from the body citing "red-tapism". The Board, whose objective is to attract investment to Goa, through quick processing and facilitation of investment proposals, is headed by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
"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 businesses complain about," Prakash has said in his resignation letter, a copy of which is available with IANS. Interestingly, the resignation comes a month before the state is scheduled to host 'Vibrant Goa-2019' a global expo and summit in Goa.
Prakash in his resignation letter has also said that, when he took up the post of CEO last year, he believed that Goa wanted to lead the race for transformation as an investor-friendly state. "I genuinely believed that the state of Goa was taking a 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 in his letter. Incidentally, last month Audhut Timblo, promoter of one of Goa's biggest mining companies, Fomento Resources, had claimed that "ease of business" was at its "lowest ebb" in Goa and had come down to zero ever since mining was shut down in 2012.
"Ease of doing business in that (mining) sector, I would say in the 1950s it was 100, if I may quote an index. Post 1962, it was 50 and in 2012, it became zero," Timblo had said on July 27. In the 2018 ease of business ranking for Indian states was released by the Centre, Goa ranked below Bihar at 19.
