To promote competition and prevent monopoly of multinational companies, the developing countries should be equipped to be global players in biotechnology sector, said P K Ghosh, president, Cadila Pharmaceuticals. He was speaking at the CII national conference on 'Bio Business-Opportunities in India,' held at Mumbai last week.

He said the R&D spending by Indian biotech companies should be increased to compete with the global players. Global spending on biotech R&D comes around US$ 8700 million while Indian companies spend around US$ 40 million that is only .45 per cent of global spending. The areas like genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics will be mastered and commercialised by India biotech companies to make a significant global presence, he added.

The global sale of important recombinant products of which patents were expired or under expiration is around US$ 18,990 million, he noted.

There is a growth of 17 per cent in the global pharma biotech sales as the sales increased to US$55 billion in 2004 against a sale of US$ 47 billion in 2003. But the pharma sale has the increase of only 8 per cent, he pointed out.

Dr R. Bapat, Chairman, Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceuticals Corporation talked about the recent happenings in bird flu disease and whether the companies are prepared to fight against it.

Dr Vidita Vaidya, Dept of Bioscience, TIFR, discussed on 'Basic research in life science in India-possible links for industry.' Prasanta Biswal, CEO, International Biotech Park Ltd, also spoke at the seminar.