Orissa plans to set up two biotech parks

The Orissa government plans to set up two biotech parks. The parks will come up at Patrapada near Bhubaneswar along the National Highway No 5 and another on the Konark sea beach near Chandrabhaga.

The biotech parks would be aimed at encouraging biotech entrepreneurs and would be established with an initial corpus of about Rs 50 crore, said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik while inaugurating an investors' meet on biotechnology organised by the Orissa science and technology department.

The biotech parks would provide laboratory infrastructure, world-class equipment, training centre and special programmes to develop bio technology, he added.

The park at Bhubaneswar will come up over an area of 74 acres, next to the medicinal plants garden developed by the state forest department. Similarly, the park to come up at Chandrabhaga will have marine life as its theme and will be set up over an area of 22 acres.

Stating that biotechnology was a frontier area of technology with immense benefits to the society in diverse areas such as food security, nutritional supplement, health care products and industrial applications, Patnaik said both the parks would give a fillip to the biotechnology sector.

The chief minister informed that the state government had formulated a draft biotech policy, which would be finalised and implemented soon. The new policy would provide right kind of incentives to investors to make investment in this sector, the chief minister added.

The policy among other things prioritises the thrust areas for basic and applied research and technology development, promotes innovation in research and development by providing financial and infrastructure support and by encouraging public-private partnership for research and development and promotes development of the industry by providing quality infrastructure and an enabling environment for sustained growth and international competitiveness.

Besides, it also aims at developing human resources in various areas of biotechnology, generate employment, build up capacity in the areas relating to IPR and biosafety, provide financial support and incentives to industry and provide an institutional framework and well defined modalities to achieve the above objectives.

The chief minister underlined the need of larger inflow of venture capital funds to meet the growing demand of investment in the biotech sector. "Our government does not believe in mere slogans, but means business," he observed.

Among others, Minister of State for Science and Technology Rabinarayan Nanda, Orissa Chief Secretary Subas Pani, Managing Director of Biotech Consortium India Ltd SR Nair, head of biotechnology department, IIT Kharagpur, SH Dey, Science and Technology Secretary PK Nayak, director of the biotechnology department Rabeeca Nayak spoke on the occasion.