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Hong Kong's biotechnology industry is an exciting and promising growth area given Hong Kong's excellent infrastructure and human talent, favourable business environment, access to capital, research and development (R&D) capabilities, and strong intellectual property protections, the Commissioner for Innovation and Technology, Mr Eddy Chan, said today (December 1).
Speaking at the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong Institute of Biotechnology, Mr Chan said the Government had been working very hard in the past few years to support the development of the local biotechnology industry.
He said, "The Innovation and Technology Fund established in 1999 has supported many projects in the biotechnology area, including those in bio-informatics, molecular diagnostics, drug and therapeutic discovery and the modernisation of Chinese medicine."
In terms of infrastructure support, biotechnology is one of the four focus areas supported by the Hong Kong Science Park set up in 2004.
Mr Chan said the Science Park runs an incubation programme for technology start-up companies, and provides affordable engineering and technical support services to companies involved in applied R&D activities.
"There is also a dedicated Bio-informatics Centre and two laboratory buildings to provide shared facilities for biotechnology companies," he added.
He said that Hong Kong was also home to some 250 biotechnology-related firms, comprising mainly healthcare-related companies with businesses in pharmaceuticals and medicinal or healthcare products. Activities include product R&D, manufacturing, marketing and sales. About 70 of these companies are listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange and Growth Enterprise Market.
"But we must not be complacent with our achievements. We may have done a lot but we are still far from where we want to be," Mr Chan said.
"But no matter how difficult it is, we must continue to facilitate its future development because life science is not a subject we can afford to ignore or lag in. Our future well-being and our health care system depend heavily on innovation and technological advances in this area," he added.
Ends/Monday, December 1, 2008
Issued at HKT 19:35
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