the goan I network
PANAJI
A day after the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Investment Promotion Board (IPB), Vishal Prakash, resigned, leading industrialists have said that the IPB has not been able to act as a facilitator and also that it has no real power.
Nitin Kunkolienkar, president of Synegra EMS, said, “After the exit of Laxmikant Parsekar as CM, IPB has not been able to function properly. Today, IPB is caught in the trap of red-tapism. There has been no facilitation for IPB at all. Even Goa Industrial Development Corporation
(GIDC) is not working efficiently. The situation for industry in the State is pretty bad.”
Incidentally, even Prakash had cited “red-tapism” as a reason for his resignation in a letter to Chief Minister, Pramod Sawant.
A member of IPB, on the condition of anonymity, said, “No power has been given to IPB. Even when an industry gets IPB’s approval, other departments like electricity and water don’t give connection to them.”
Prakash was at the helm of affairs of IPB for slightly more than a year. In this duration, a key development was the launch of IPB’s single window website, which was aimed at giving necessary government approvals to industrialists online.
Sources said that no major development happened on single window website after its launch because there were no meetings of IPB after that. Prakash was appointed as IPB’s chief when late Manohar Parrikar was the chief minister.
However soon, Parrikar became unwell and IPB did not meet regularly. Then, Sawant took over as the CM, but code of conduct was in force due to elections.
Sandip Bhandare, chartered accountant from Panaji, said, “If the government wants to project Goa as an investment destination, then it is important that the CEO of IPB, Industries Minister and CM have one meeting every week to discuss issues amongst themselves.”
In his resignation letter to CM, Prakash had also mentioned that his contract fee was not paid since January 2019 due to some reluctance to pay GST on the contract fee.
A source said, “Such issues would have been solved if there were regular meetings between CM and Prakash.”
