Govt plans to set up Rs 5,000-cr PPP fund for R&D

The government plans to set up a public-private partnership fund of Rs 5,000 crore for supporting joint research and development (R&D), Minister of State for Science & Technology Ashwani Kumar said here today.

“The sub-committee of the PM's council of trade and industry on promotion of public-private partnership (PPP) for R&D has prepared and submitted a concept paper.

"One of the important recommendations is to establish a PPP fund of Rs 5,000 crore for supporting joint R&D and commercialisation of R&D outputs," Kumar said at an event organised by Confederation of Indian Industry here.

The proposed fund is expected to be available for R&D efforts at public educational institutions like the IITs, as well as private industries, he said.

The government also plans to bring out a white paper for increasing private sector engagement in R&D.

“Increasing the engagement of the private sector in R&D is an essential step. An industry-led initiative to prepare a white paper for advising the government for launching policy initiatives is being considered,” he said.

A joint committee of the industry and the government is being constituted for preparing the white paper, he said.

"We are looking at how to increase the gross expenditure in R&D as a percentage of GDP to two per cent within the next five years. We are also looking at quadrupling the size of funds estimated to be deployed by the national private sector within the next five years," he said.

It is also proposed to increase the investment of Navaratna public sector enterprises in R&D through a policy directive, he said. Some of the areas, where such funds would be invested are R&D in bio-generics and vaccines, electric mobility vehicles, electronic hardware, solar energy, information technology and sea-water desalination.

"As we move to value added products, research and development is becoming a must," said Infosys Executive Co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan, who was also present at the event.