Honourable mention for bioeconomy in Interim Budget, with trillion-dollar potential in mind
The Hindu
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a new bio-manufacturing scheme in the 2024-2024 Interim Budget to boost India's bio-economy, but budget cuts may hinder progress.
In her speech for the 2024-2025 Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke of “a new scheme of bio-manufacturing and bio-foundry” to provide “environment-friendly alternatives such as biodegradable polymers, bio-plastics, bio-pharmaceuticals and bio-agri-inputs”.
The announcement is part of a bid to have the bio-economy contribute $300 billion to the Indian economy by 2030, representing a jump of around ₹18 lakh crore in value from current levels, and $1 trillion by 2047. The products of the bio-economy also play key roles in India’s sustainability and ‘green’ economy targets.
“The way to upskill India’s bio-science sector is to put money into bio-manufacturing and not only prioritise research,” Shambhavi Naik, a researcher at The Takshashila Institution, said.
In the 2024-2025 Budget, the total allocation for the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) has been cut by 16%, to ₹2,251.52 crore, potentially slowing its recovery from the highs of the COVID-19 pandemic, when it helped develop vaccines, to the pre-pandemic level.
The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a public-sector enterprise under the DBT that interfaces between academia and industry, has also been allocated what it was in 2023-2024 — ₹40 crore — even though its actual expenditure was higher.
The bio-economy refers to all economic activities that use biotechnologies to produce value, and includes vaccines, diagnostics, bio-ethanol, bio-plastics, genetically modified crops, etc. According to the latest Indian BioEconomy Report (IBER), published by BIRAC in 2023, “The [Indian] innovation ecosystem continues to flourish, and we aspire to become one of the top 5 global bio-manufacturing hubs and among the top 10 biotechnology destinations globally.”
The new bio-manufacturing scheme “will also help in transforming today’s consumptive manufacturing paradigm to the one based on regenerative principles,” Ms. Sitharaman added.
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