Economy Minister Birutė Vėsaitė dismissed Lukauskas from his office last week.
"Speaking about Lithuania's image, I think that the radical replacement of the heads of such structures as Enterprise Lithuania and Invest Lithuania, without any grounds, is incomprehensible," Vz.lt quoted Sigitas Žvirblis, a former member of the management board at Enterprise Lithuania and the CEO of Intersurgical, as saying.
According to Delfi.lt, Milda Dargužaitė, the head of Invest Lithuania, the government's FDI promotion agency, was also asked by the Economy Ministry to resign but refused to do so.
Rūta Skyrienė, the executive director of the Investors' Forum, an association of foreign investors in Lithuania, said that she did not back plans to merge Enterprise Lithuania and Invest Lithuania into a single organization.
"Following the separation of the organizations, they became focused on their core activities. While Invest Lithuania is working with investors abroad and is trying to help with the development, Enterprise Lithuania is working with companies that want to invest and is helping to grow Lithuania's future export potential," she said.
Lukauskas said earlier that he had not received a single complaint from the Economy Ministry about the quality of his work.
Lukauskas, formerly the head of Procter & Gamble Marketing Latvia's office, took up his post as managing director of Enterprise Lithuania in early December 2009.
