Hyderabad: Within the next five years, Telangana will be able to grow its life science industry from $50 billion to $100 billion, and Hyderabad will become a major international hub for pharmaceutical manufacturing when Pharma City, the state's biggest manufacturing cluster, is completed, asserted industries minister K.T.Rama Rao.
Speaking ahead of the 20th edition of BioAsia which will be held here from February 24 to 26, he claimed that over the last 19 years, Hyderabad had become the world leader in the life sciences industry, attracting investments of Rs 25,000 crore.
He projected that, compared to the existing four lakh, Telangana would employ four lakh more people in the biological sciences and allied sectors in the next five years. Rama Rao lashed out at the Centre for not offering any support to Telangana's in the sector, where Hyderabad has emerged as the “vaccine capital of the world”.
The minister stated that 900 crore doses of vaccines were manufactured in Hyderabad yearly, accounting for 35 per cent of world production, and that this figure is expected to rise to 1,400 crore doses next year, accounting for 50 per cent of global production.
“Vaccines are being exported to more than 150 countries. Telangana has world's largest USFDA approved facilities in a single province at 214 which surpassed New Jersey in the US where there are 189 USFDA units. We made several and repeated requests to the Centre to extend support to Telangana and Hyderabad but unfortunately there has been no response in the last nine years," Rao stated.
Hyderabad Pharma City, the world's largest pharma manufacturing cluster being built on the city's outskirts on approximately 14,000 acres, is nearing completion and would transform Hyderabad into a worldwide pharma manufacturing hub. “There are some cases pending in the High Court against land acquisition for the project. The hearings were concluded and the judgement is expected soon. As of now, no land allotments were made to any company in the Pharma City. Many big pharma companies are eager to set up operations," he noted.
There is a high demand from life sciences companies to set up operations in Genome Valley on the city's outskirts and that the government would soon construct a 20 lakh sqft real estate space to meet the demand. He mentioned that approximately 30 lakh square feet had already been completed and were in use. The Sultanpur medical devices cluster had evoked positive response and that there was almost no spare space in the cluster.
