Friday, April 22 2005 18:38 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: India's biggest bio-tech show, 'Bangalore Bio-2005, opened in Bangalore today (Apr 22, 2005) as Government promised more investment in biotechnology, the US and Britain proposed partnerships with India and experts spoke of the country reaching $ 5 billion in bio-tech business by 2010.

As the event, touted also as one of Asia's largest BT shows, began, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Anbumani Ramdoss said Government would invest more in Biotech which had a holistic approach to prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

He told the gathering that included eminent scientists from overseas and India that "everything will revolve round ethics" in the structures that Government would evolve to regulate clinical trials but made it clear that there would be no blockade or "inspector raj" and it would be professional.

M K Bhan, Secretary, Union Department of Biotechnology, said the Government was committed to sustaining the bio-tech sector in a "consistent progressively scaled manner'. The Government would lay major emphasis on global partnerships, giving a "hassle free" environment to global partners.

British High Commissioner to India Michael Arthur, whose country is strongly represented at the fifth edition of the annual show, expressed Britain's keenness to partner with India in biotech, while George Atkinson, Scientific Advisor to the US Secretary of State, said the potential for collaboration with India was "so many" and scientists and researchers of both countries have "many areas of common interest" for collaboration.

Biopharma major Biocon chairman and managing director Kiran Majumdar Shaw, who is also chairperson of Karnataka's Vision Group on Biotechnology, said Indian biotech industry was in a nascent stage but the growth seen in the last five years would be amplified in the next five years.

The country could reach the target of $ 5 billion in biotech business by 2010, she said. The global biotech sector was a $ 40 billion industry and 70 per cent of the drugs in the approval pipeline was in the biotech sector, she said, emphasising the potential it held out for India.

Karnataka Chief Minister N Dharam Singh said Bangalore was home to 131 biotech companies, accounting for 50 per cent of the total number of such firms in the country, with 21 of them opening in the last one year itself.

He said the State Government was in the process of setting up a bio-tech park named "Bangalore Helix" with world-class infrastructure and work on it would start in June.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said the bio-cluster in Bangalore should move to other parts of the country also and added her Government would make her State a destination for the knowledge-based sector, apart from tourism.

Fifteen countries and nine States from across the country and 110 companies are taking part in the three-day event.