Boost for pharmaceuticals

Shanghai will invest more than one billion yuan on research and development to promote its modern biological pharmaceutical industry during the next three years. The report said the local government recently listed the modern biological pharmaceutical industry as one of the three high-technology industries that would be developed in an accelerated way. The output value of the industry rose 12 per cent to 10 billion yuan in the first nine months of the year from the same period of last year. Shanghai is planning to raise the industry's sale value to 37 billion yuan in 2000 from 12.7 billion yuan last year.