Vietnam is currently the thirteenth most populous country in the world with 88 million people, in which the wealthy and the middle-class are on the rise. In 2010, Vietnamese people spent US$7 billion on healthcare, which will surge to US$11.3 billion in 2015 with an average growth rate of 10.3% per year, said Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Meanwhile, the medical service system is still underdeveloped in terms of quantity and quality. Therefore, healthcare is considered a potential market for investors.

However, there are now only 137 private hospitals, both locally-invested and foreign-invested, among a total of 1,063 hospitals across the country.

This ratio is very low in comparison with the regional countries, although the State has introduced many preferential policies for private investors, said Tran Quoc Khoa, head of the non-public healthcare service management division under the Ministry of Health.

Speaking at the seminar "Promoting international cooperation in medical and healthcare investment in Vietnam" held in Hanoi yesterday, Khoa said most private hospitals were of medium and small scale, mainly located in big cities like Hanoi, HCMC and Danang. Meanwhile, there is no private hospital in remote areas.

Only 28 out of the 63 cities and provinces have private hospitals, he added.

According to Nguyen Ba Cuong, deputy director of the Foreign Investment Agency at the Ministry of Planning and Investment, among the 137 private hospitals, there are only six wholly foreign-invested hospitals, with a total investment of US$94 million. This figure has not changed over the past ten years

There are also 30 clinics developed by local investors, with total investment of some US$14.3 million, very modest compared to the demand for healthcare of Vietnamese people.

Earlier, the plan for healthcare network development until 2010, with a vision to 2020, passed by the Prime Minister in 2006 was targeted to achieve a ratio of two private inpatient beds to 10,000 people by 2010, but by then the ratio was only 0.7 beds to 10,000 people.

The goal for 2020 is to raise the ratio to five private inpatient beds for 10,000 people, meaning there must be around 40,000 inpatient beds nationwide by 2020, versus 7,500 at present, or 10% of the total inpatient beds in Vietnam.

As such, Khoa deemed the target hard to achieve without changes in policies for luring investment into this sector such as personal training, tax and land incentives, health insurance and social insurance.