Raw deal for biotech industrial products

Biotechnology-based industrial products are not being developed and promoted in the absence of coordination among ministries, entrepreneurs, financial institutions and researchers, sources said.

Except some leading pharmaceutical companies which manufacture vaccines, hormones, insulin and others, there is no sector that invests in biotechnology.

Officials of a biotech product manufacturing firm in Bangladesh said the world's top hundred biotech companies are located in the US and the EU countries.

He said innovation of the developed countries would change people's life-style as biotech products are safe to use and environment-friendly.   

Kazi Akram Uddin Ahmed, president of the FBCCI said, "I have already passed my two years' tenure but it is a matter of sorrow that I have not seen any investor with biotech proposal or any coordinated effort for investment in industrial biotechnology."

He said, "We, the entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, are still in traditional manufacturing base whereas millions of dollars are being invested even in the neighbouring countries in biotechnology."

The apex trade body leader said biotechnology is the future for knowledge-based modern industrialisation.

Md. Farhad Uddin, additional secretary of the Ministry of Industry (MoI) said the government is working on formulating an industrial biotechnology policy and a draft has already been prepared.

He said though the world's developed and many developing countries have already flourished in manufacturing industrial biotechnology-based products, local entrepreneurs still are shy in this sector.

Sayedul Haque, director general of the National Institute of Biotechnology (NIB) said in future, low tech-based industries would be abolished and knowledge-based high technological products would come up.

He said currently there is no inter-ministerial coordination to let entrepreneurs, financiers and researchers develop and promote biotech products.

However, he said it is a matter of hope that the leading pharmaceutical companies have already invested in manufacturing biotech products paving the way for large-scale investments in many other sectors.