Gujarat eyes global play with new biotech policy

The Gujarat government on Thursday unveiled new Biotechnology Policy offering upto 25 per cent financial support on the capital investments in the sector.

The policy looks to create about 1.2 lakh new employment opportunities, while attracting estimated investment of over ₹20,000 crore in the sector. The policy’s operative period will be five years starting 2022 till 2027.

Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel stated that the policy aims to make Gujarat a globally-recognized Biotechnology Hub. The new policy will promote partnerships between various stakeholders such as NGOs, scientific establishments and industries.

The Chief Minister stated that, “frontier technologies of the industry have been covered in this policy. Besides, the list of biotechnology products and services have been extended.”

The policy offers financial assistance for technology acquisition, skill development, alternative energy production, quality certification, and bandwidth leasing, to make Gujarat’s biotechnology industry world class. The previous policy did not include such assistance.

MSMEs investing less than ₹200 crore get assistance upto ₹40 crore and mega/large projects with a capital investments of over ₹200 crore will get assistance of up to 25 per cent of the total capital expenditure with a ceiling of ₹200 crore. This assistance will be provided in the form of 20 quarterly instalments over a period of five years, the policy document said.

Besides interest subsidy on term loan for such projects, the policy also offers 100 per cent reimbursement on electricity duty for a period of five years.

Industries manufacturing the products which are not being manufactured in the country will be covered under strategically important projects. The provision has been made to give additional assistance to these industries through special packages of ecosystem empowerment and mega/large projects.

Strengthening overall ecosystem
The new policy also looks to strengthen the overall ecosystem. It will encourage special projects such as pre-clinical testing, genome sequencing in private sector, plug and play facilities, private sector BSL-3 lab-vaccine development, and manufacturing, testing and certification laboratories.

“Biotechnology has made significant contributions in solving new-age problems, especially in the field of health and agriculture. The science-driven industry has been instrumental in understanding and fighting the global Covid-19 pandemic. It was due to biotechnology that we got effective rapid antigen tests, RT-PCR tests, vaccines, etc,” Patel added.

British Deputy High Commissioner to Gujarat Peter Cook; Gujarat Chief Secretary Pankaj Kumar; Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology Vijay Nehra, and representatives of nationally and internationally renowned institutes, and biotechnology industry were present on the occasion. The Hindu BusinessLine