Union Minister Jitendra Singh stated on Friday that the bioeconomy has experienced tremendous growth in the past ten years with India’s biotech ecosystem now consisting of around 9,000 firms compared to just 50 in 2014.
The Science and Technology Minister speaking at the FE Green Sarathi summit also stated that India’s bioeconomy has experienced tremendous expansion rising from $10 billion in 2014 to over $130 billion in 2024 in just a decade and is expected to reach $300 billion by 2030.
The Union Minister stated that “With the kind of threat of pollution, the climate challenges, etc., being faced, this government has held sustainability at a very high priority. This is quite contrary to the times till about 10-15 years ago when India was not taken very seriously as far as issues like climate or the green concerns because they thought either India was alien to it or maybe we didn’t understand the seriousness of it.”
He also highlighted India’s goal to reach net zero by 2070 which Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced at COP-26 in 2021. He said that from a country that was once thought to be either alien or clueless about these futuristic issues now has advanced to the point where it could set the standard for other countries to follow.
The minister also discussed the government’s sustainability measures over the past several years. Following that the minister emphasized the importance of India’s coastal regions stating that the sea bed of the nation is rich in biodiversity, metals and minerals that other nations even those that are situated in coastal areas cannot access.
“We have a green hydrogen mission. We have a mission for climate change. And when we talk about the biodiversity issue, it is we who have launched the deep sea mission. I think we are among the first in the world to launch such a mission,” he said.
Additionally he stated that “we are among the first in the world to have very recently come up with a biotechnology policy which is primarily aimed at enhancing bioeconomy and also the cellular economy and that has been very appropriately named as BioE3.”
