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Agricultural biotech institute to be set up by government

To help increase the competitiveness of Taiwan's agricultural biotechnology sector following the country's accession to the WTO, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday a non-profit National Re-search Institute of Agricultural Science would be established.

The Cabinet will also set up a commission to review and revise policies governing academics to give them greater flexibility to choose their career paths as Taiwan becomes a knowledge-based society, he said.

Yu made the remarks at the closing ceremony of an Emerging Industrial Technology and Strategy Review Board meeting.

The five-day event, organized by the Cabinet's Science and Technology Advisory Group, was attended by local and international technology experts who offered recommendations on biotechnology, industrial science and technology, telecommunications and agricultural biotechnology.

Purnell Choppin, president emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the US, said that a solution to many problems faced by Taiwan's agriculture biotech community would be to establish a national research institute that could coordinate efforts among the government, academia and industry.

"It's important that it has the overall responsibility for coordinating activities in agricultural biotechnology and eliminates bureaucracy currently resident in other institutions," Choppin said.

According to Minister Without Portfolio Tsay Ching-yen (蔡清彥), the Cabinet will establish the research center by transforming the eight existing agriculture research centers under the Cabinet's Council of Agriculture from government institutions to non-profit organizations.

"One of the biggest advantages for doing so is that the organizations will have more flexibility to recruit professional experts while government institutions can only hire civil servants," he said.

Besides, it would be fairly easy for the council, which receives annual government funding of NT$3 billion, to set aside NT$30 million to set up a non-profit entity as required by law, Tsay said.

David Mowery, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that Taiwan's government should review what he said were inflexible policies governing university faculty members.

"The goal of such a review should be the deregulation of university personnel policies for faculty to allow greater scope for research collaboration with industrial firms and movement of faculty from universities to industry and from industry to universities," he said.

Mowery also proposed establishing a commission to review the role and structure of Taiwanese public and private universities.

"This commission should consider ways to enhance institutional autonomy, independence of central control and flexibility in administrative policy and strategy within Taiwan's university system," he said.
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