The Meeting of Parties on Bio safety will be adopting 18 decisions at the end of its ongoing deliberations in Hyderabad tomorrow. Deputy Secretary to the UN Convention on Biodiversity, Charles Gbedemah told reporters this morning that the end-documents are under preparation and they will be circulated tomorrow to the member countries for adoption. Stating that the deliberations at the conference are advancing positively over the Cartagena and Kuala Lumpur supplementary Protocols on Biosafety, Mr Charles said, the focus of the deliberations is mainly on facilitating the implementation of the protocol by encouraging member countries to make an informed decision at their national level.
Amidst growing concerns over the socio-economic considerations of the Living Modified Organisms (LMOs), the International Conference is discussing various related issues for the past four days. The deliberations are also revolving around the technology transfer and trans-boundary movement of them and science-based risk assessment and their management and capacity building to tackle related challenges.
Around 2000 delegates from 151 countries are taking part in the negotiations for the past four days. At least 40 countries have to ratify the Kuala Lumpur Supplementary protocol to bring it into force while only three out of 51 signatory countries ratified it so far.

The country’s first bio-fuel outlet will be operational in Karnataka soon. Mr.Y. B. Ramakrishna, the Executive Chairman of Karnataka State Bio-fuel Development Board informed this in Bangalore today. Speaking to media persons, he informed that Bharat Petroleum will start the outlet on Hassan- Channapatna highway in about two months time. The bio-fuel park situated in Hassan will supply 300 litres of bio-fuel to the outlet everyday. The country spends 34 percent of its budget on import of crude oil. Hence he pointed out that use of bio-fuels not only saves foreign exchange but also provides revenue to our farmers. Speaking about the efforts of the board to encourage use of bio-fuels in vehicles, Mr.Ramakrishna said 2200 buses of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation are using bio-diesal at present, which will be increased to 5000 buses this year. He also disclosed that a bio-fuel production unit with a capacity of 50,000 litres has tied up with Bangalore International Airport to supply bio-fuel for ground vehicles. He said they are in talks with the Airport management to utilise the bio-fuel for the 1400 taxis run there. He informed that Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka are in forefront in production of ethanol which is blended with petrol and diesal. He said experiment is on to blend upto 20 percent of ethanol with petrol and 10 percent with diesal. Right now only five percent is blended with the fossil fuel.