Hanoi(VNA)🐈 – The lack of a breakthrough invision and infeasible legal policies, worsened by complicated administrative procedures in pharmacy sector, areamong limitations that make Vietnam less attractive to foreign investors, saidDuong Thi Mai Hoa, managing partner at Hanoi-based Indusviet Legal LLC.

In her writing publicised on Dau tu (Investment) newspaper on July 19, she said that since 2015, Vietnam’s pharmaceutical sector has recordedseveral significant achievements, thus taking its first step in attracting theattention of both prospective domestic and foreign investors as well as majorpharma corporations to invest and collaborate with Vietnam. The domestic pharmaceutical industry is prioritisedfor development, especially in areas of clinical pharmacy, manufacturingfacilities, and related personnel via the promulgation of various policies. For manufacturing facilitiesin particular, Vietnam’s pharmaceutical ecosystem is becoming more developedand very strongly linked with the increasing number of manufacturing factories,reaching the number of 250 factories and 200 exporting and/or importingfacilities. Nevertheless, there existchallenges for Vietnam to face, she said. Over the past few years, especially during theCOVID-19 pandemic, countries have paidmore attention to health, medicine, and pharmacy with new approaches. As a result, the investment trend intopharmaceuticals in association with technologytransfer is taking a clearer shape. She said that Vietnam has made major strides in establishingpolicies and amending legislation in an attempt to provide guidance andreinforcement to the development of Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry. One of the prominent points is that the global trend of developing technologytransfer in the industry is reflected in its contents. Subsequently, it setsout a specific target for technology transfer by 2030 to transfer productiontechnology of at least 100 innovator drugs with valid trademarks, vaccines,medical biologicals, and medicine which Vietnam has not been able to produce. In practice, investment inpharmaceuticals is also starting to see a transition. At the beginning of 2022,Indian enterprises entered into an MoU on funding Vietnam-India PharmaceuticalPark with Dai An Urban-Industrial Zone Development Corporation in the northernprovince of Hai Duong. With a total capitalreaching 10-12 billion USD, this project is expected to bea strategic lever to propel Vietnam to become a leading pharmaceuticalresearch, development, and manufacturing institute in Southeast Asia. Apart from Indian enterprises,a plethora of multinational corporations such as Sanofi and Nipro Pharma areexpected to continue pouring money and increasing their presence in Vietnam. Despite a transition in thelegal policies of Vietnam in providing more incentives for better attraction offoreign capital, such policies, nonetheless, prove insufficient in the long runfor investors to cope with the complicated or unspecified legal procedures inVietnam as well as the humbleness of objective aspects on manufacturingfacilities, materials, personnel, and policies on domestic drug prices. Desite the Law on Technology Transfer started taking effects in July 2018, there isyet to exist any provision expressively stipulating the procedures and processof pharma tech transfer in Vietnam. The Ministry of Health hasdrafted a circular guiding the activity of drug processing and technologytransfer in drug manufacturing as a replacement to a 2013 circular guiding theactivity of drug processing. But currently, this circular is yet to beapproved, thus effectively leaving a gap in the legal framework./.