Brussels, 31 July 2002
Some 17 countries, including seven EU Member States now have official statistics on biotechnology, almost a five-fold increase from the year 2000, it emerged at a recent OECD (Organisation for economic cooperation and development) meeting.
In addition to these 17 countries, the UK and South Korea are using private organisations which are working with the respective governments to collect data, bringing the total up to 19. Around half of these countries are using the provisional OECD definition of biotechnology, ensuring some degree of comparability. A scoreboard is envisaged for 2003.
Delegates also agreed on a model set of questions that will be used to identify biotechnology activity in R&D (research and development) surveys, and agreed to develop a model survey to better measure the economic impact of biotechnology
For further information, please consult the OECD statistics newsletter at the following web address: http://www.oecd.org/pdf/M00032000/M0003 2601.pdf