Centre organises consultation with States on biomanufacturing

Following the approval of the Biotechnology for Economy, Environment and Employment by the Union Cabinet last August, the Department of Biotechnology organised a consultation with States on Friday here to setting up bio-manufacturing facilities in their regions. For the next — say Biocon — to emerge we need close engagement between States and the Centre,” said Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology. “Biotechnology has never been much of a buzzword but I am confident that in the coming years, it will be an avenue of massive investments and profits and that take early steps will have an advantage,” Union Science Minister Jitendra Singh said at the conclave. The road map to achieving this will involve establishing ‘State-Centric BioE3 Cells’, formulating State-centric BioE3 action plans, constituting State-level steering committees, appropriate working groups and nodal officers and setting up Bio-AI hubs, foundries and manufacturing hubs. States are expected to adopt at least two thematic areas based on their strengths, needs, expertise and capacities, ensuring a “localised yet comprehensive approach” to foster bio-manufacturing and, identifying a few bio-based productsincluding chemicals from the priority list for their bio-manufacturing, an accompanying document specified.