Telangana attracted over ₹6,400 crore (about $850 million) investments in the sector of life sciences in the last one year alone, Industries and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao said on Thursday. The Minister, while inaugurating the 19th edition of BioAsia, a two-day conference devoted to the sector and being conducted virtually, said that as many as 215 existing and new firms had invested in the State. A senior official said that the Minister was referring to investments received in 2021. Hyderabad continues to make an indelible impact not just in India but also globally, said Mr. Rao, adding that the investments were almost 200% more than the previous year and created additional employment for 34,000 people. The investment underscores growing role and impact of Hyderabad’s life sciences ecosystem and the State’s endeavour to ensure required support, he said. Pointing to the need for government to play a key enabling role, he said that India has a prominent presence in the global pharmaceutical industry and regarded as pharmacy capital of the world. The country ranks 3rd in volume and 14th in terms of value in global pharma market. “There is a huge gap in value and volume contribution, which can be filled only by moving up the value chain. The gap cannot be bridged with incremental innovation in generics alone but we must build our capabilities in areas like complex generics, biologics and biosimilars, cell and gene therapy...,” he said.
“The government needs to stand with the industry to see how some of the pricing pressures can be balanced with strong volume growth and more R&D incentivised for the firms,” he said. Though policies and regulations have improved in the country, there is more to be done in terms of IP policy and enforcement framework, regulatory reforms, development of ancillary industries, pricing policy rationalisation, reimbursement schemes, duty structure correction particularly for medical devices and rare diseases drugs as well as incentives to support R&D investment. These would help accelerate growth and make healthcare delivery better and affordable, Mr. Rao said, requesting the Centre to consider these long pending demands and help the sector achieve its full potential. Telangana government is focused on key pillars and creating advanced scientific infrastructure, training industry-ready talent pool, rationalising State-level regulations and clearances, promoting linkages between industry and academia in a more systematic and institutionalized manner, he said, adding that BioAsia helped showcase the State initiatives besides shaping strategy based on inputs from the industry leaders. ‘Future Ready’ is theme of this year’s conference. The Minister congratulated Drew Weissman, recipient of Genome Valley Excellence Award for 2022, for his pioneering work on mRNA, which led to the development of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against COVID-19. “His contributions are indeed remarkable and helped save millions of lives globally,” Mr. Rao said.
