BioWorld International Correspondent

MUNICH, Germany - "Biotechnology is one of the greatest hopes for the [German] high-tech sector," said State Secretary Christoph Matschie, one of the top-ranking civil servants in the German Ministry of Education and Research.

Speaking at the Berlin-Buch Conference on Biotechnology 2003, held in Berlin, Matschie called for improving the country's tax code to benefit venture capital in general and its applications for biotechnology in particular.

Matschie also expressed the ministry's support for all aspects of biotechnology, including agricultural applications, a part of the sector that is viewed with considerable skepticism by a broad swath of the German public.

"Biotechnology offers vast potential to improving the quality of life, whether that is in medicine, nutrition, agriculture or environmental protection," he said.

Acknowledging that the industry, which had become accustomed to steady growth, was learning to cope with consolidation, he said the difficult market was no reason to lose trust in the sector's future.

Improvements in the tax code, about which he did not give specific details, should ease financing of research-intensive companies in the first phases after their founding, he said.

Matschie praised biotechnology's place in the German economy, saying, "High technology, such as biotech, is again playing a key role in our country." He added that "Germany tops the European list of countries with new biotechnology companies and it is the second largest technology exporter in the world."

Other key politicians turned out to express their support for the sector as a whole and for the potential cluster at Berlin-Buch. Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor, and Ulrich Junghanns, minister for economics in the surrounding state of Brandenburg, both gave addresses citing biotechnology's importance for the area's economy. They also cited the advantages of the area's facilities for unifying basic and applied research, particularly at the Arnold-Graffi House, a newly inaugurated bioinformatics research center.

As part of its Framework Program for Biotechnology in 2003, the German Ministry is supporting biotech companies with more than €480 million in institutional funding and more than €180 million in project money. That is more than twice the funding that biotech research received from the German government in recent years.