Kalyan Ray New Delhi, Jan 18, 2013, DHNS

Primary fund source dried up due to the economic crisis in Europe

A United Nations institute on biotechnology research has approached the Indian government for take over as its primary fund source has dried up due to the economic crisis in Europe.

International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology started as a UN Industrial Development Organisation project in 1987 and later became a full fledged UN centre in Delhi since 1994 with the objective of translating western biotechnology research into products for the developing world. An autonomous inter-governmental organisation with 61 member states, ICGEB now has three separate institutes in Delhi, Trieste and Cape Town.

In June 2012, the Italian government, which provided two-thirds of funding to the Indian component, decided to quit the Delhi centre triggering a financial crisis for the institute, which discovered malaria vaccine and dengue diagnostic kit among other research accomplishments in the last 15 years.

The Italian government requested (to ICGEB) that from 2014 all the components (Delhi, Trieste and Cape Town) be funded by the host governments exclusively while the contribution of member states will go to the extramural program that includes fellowships, courses and grants to all the member countries, ICGEB director general Francisco Baralle told Deccan Herald.

The cash-strapped institute with a sprawling campus in south Delhi has now approached the department of biotechnology under the central government with a request of taking charge of the institute.

This, in fact, will possibly be one of the first tasks cut out for the new DBT secretary K Vijayraghavan currently director of National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore who is scheduled to take up his new assignment in the last week of January, sources said.

Vijayraghans predecessor in the DBT, M K Bhan, decided to set up a five-member panel to review technical and administrative issues involved in central governments taking over of an UN organisation. But the panels terms of reference are yet to be framed and is expected only after the new DBT secretary assume his charge.

While Indias contribution in ICGEB currently hovered around Rs 10 crore, it might go up to Rs 30 crore if DBT took over it as a national institute, said ICGEB director V S Chauhan.

See the article here:
UN biotechnology institute seeks govt takeover

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