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Marine biotech park near Mamallapuram: Jayalalithaa

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI APRIL 22 . The State Government will establish a marine biotechnology park near Mamallapuram at a cost of Rs. 50 crores to offer incubating facilities, the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, said today.

The proposed park would offer immense possibilities for commercial exploitation in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food supplements, she said at a function here to mark laying of the foundation stone for the TICEL (TIDCO Centre for Life Sciences) Bio-park.

The Rs. 62.5-crore TICEL Bio-park, being set up together with the Cornell University, would be a state-of-the-art bio-resource centre. It would provide facilities of wet labs and the latest scientific equipment to entrepreneurs. The park had a proposed tenancy area of 1.20 lakh sq. feet, conforming to international standards and would provide the biotech entrepreneur with comprehensive access to all required resources. It was expected to become fully operational by January 2004, said the Chief Minister.

A medicinal park would be established at Nilakkottai, Dindigul district, as part of the eco-enterprises project.

This park would house enterprises based on raw materials to be sourced from neighbouring areas, which were traditionally rich in the cultivation of herbs and provide the agro-climatic conditions for a variety of medicinal plants.

To give financial assistance for such bio-enterprises, the TIDCO set up a consortium led by the IL & FS to create a corpus of Rs. 90 crores, she said.

The chairman of the State Bio-technology Board, M.S. Swaminathan, said the TICEL Bio-park was designed to assist entrepreneurs on an end-to-end basis, beginning with commercial variable technologies and ending with bio-ethics and intellectual property rights.

The Eco-enterprises Park in Dindigul district, R & D Park to be formed by the IIT-Madras at Taramani, here, and the Virtual University for Agrarian Prosperity sponsored by the M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation would help educated youth to take to self-employment.

The Industries Minister, Nainar Nagendran, the TIDCO Chairman, Arun Ramanathan, and the Industries Secretary, K. Skandan, participated.

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