BANGALORE, July 12. - The city, which is all set to have the first ever bio-tech park of its kind in the country, is expecting investments worth Rs 1,000 crore in biotechnology companies in the next few months.

The city, which saw the fourth edition of the Bangalore BIO 2004 which was inaugurated yesterday, will get its biotech park, spread over 100 acres, at a cost of Rs 100 crore.

The park would have a state-of-the-art common facilities and incubation centre with the Centre contributing Rs 50 crore to support the project.

Speaking at the inaugural, Mrs Kiran Majumdar, chief, Biocon , and chairperson, vision group on biotechnology, said in the last one year, 25 new BT (bio-technology) companies had been set up in the country of which 17 were in Karnataka.

The state, which had become a showcase for BT, she said also accounted for 110 of the 240 BT companies that had been registered in the country. Of this, 97 were located in Bangalore itself.

The Indian biotech sector had gathered tremendous momentum in the last few years with Bangalore taking the lead in both IT and BT.

The technical competence ,quality of human resource and the infrastructure required to undertake research and development, had given the fillip to the country and Bangalore, in particular.

Consequently, Karnataka was the highest recipient of venture capital at $8 million last year. Further, the state and the city were recognized in Asia as the fastest growing bio clusters.

She said an estimated one million jobs were expected to be created by the biotechnology sector by 2010 with the current size of the revenues hovering around $700 million.

The biotechnology sector, she said had begun to get national focus as it could bring about a sea change in the economic life of the ordinary people.

Earlier, Mr Shankarlinghe Gowda, secretary, IT and BT, Karnataka, said that biotechnology touched the life of common men in its true sense.

It played an important role in bringing about the desired changes to agriculture, health and environment sectors. The chief minister, Mr Dharam Singh, said that the biotechnology sector played a crucial role in speedy development of drugs at affordable prices for dreadful diseases like AIDS, TB, hepatitis, malaria and typhoid.