Karnataka govt announces Millennium Biotech Policy

Karnataka has always been India's premier biotech destination, but the state government does not want to rest on its laurels. In the new Millennium Biotech Policy, the government has announced a slew of incentives for the sector. CNBC-TV18’s Sunanda Jayaseelan reports.
The Millennium Biotech Policy was announced in 2001. What the state government did today was to announce revisions to that policy. The key revisions include setting up of a bio-venture fund to the tune of Rs 50 crore, which will be funded partly by the state government and partly be a venture capital firm. The second is stamp duty exemption between 75-100% depending on which zone the company is situated in.
For the purposes of offering fiscal incentives the state government has classified industrial clusters into to one two and three zones and depending on where the company is situated, it will be able to avail such stamp duty exemption.
Third was the setting up of 10 biotech finishing schools as also five biotech parks outside of Bangalore focusing on tier II and III cities; The state government expressed some bit of concern over the fact that there were not enough research projects coming out of the biotech sector. It has proposed setting up of fund with a corpus of Rs 20 crore towards a commercialization of research projects.

One last proposal put forward by the state government is a new IT BT facility, which will be set up with an investment of Rs 23 crore. The biotech industry achieved revenues of USD 2.5 billion in 2008-09 and the state government is confident that once most of these proposals have really been rolled at, it will be able to achieve a USD 5 billion target, which it has set for itself by 2012.