BANGALORE: "Delighted" and "wonderful" were the words used by the biotechnology industry to describe Singh's removal of the 200 million minimum export obligation for exemption from customs duty for specified equipments. "The best thing about the budget is that it will fuel investments into R&D by the big companies," Kiran Mazumdar, CEO, Biocon and chairperson of Karnataka's biotechnology task force, told IANS. "Contract research in India which is around 1 billion currently could shoot up to 10 billion in the next three years." "Biotech is our today's sunrise, tomorrow's showpiece industry," the finance minister told the Lok Sabha while presenting the budget Friday. He lifted the restriction of full exemption being limited to just one percent of last year's export turnover for R&D units. Further, Singh enhanced the benefit of full customs duty exemption for specified equipment to 25 percent of the previous year's export turnover for those R&D units with manufacturing facilities. "Today, about 5,000 scientists are working in India's biotechnology corporates," Mazumdar said. "These concessions can help take this number up, by at least 10 times. This is the potential of the industry and these concessions will boost the biotechnology sector." "The relief is phenomenal and it will definitely fuel growth of the industry. More importantly, it will make outsourcing of R&D a substantial sector in India," said B. Ravi Kumar of Xcyton diagnostics. Kumar is credited with producing India's first HIV test kit. Mazumdar said it is the small and medium sector that stands to benefit the most from the latest concession. "Smaller companies which are earning thousands of rupees today cannot afford to spend millions on equipment in this highly capital intensive sector," she said. And, it is not the industry alone that is happy. "It will also help India in producing products and processes," said G. Padmanabhan, former director of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. "The problem has been that indigenous technology is not taking off in the way it should. Such incentives will help boost research in the large infrastructure already existing in government and academic institutions."
Source: IANS