VIETNAM OUTLINES NEW DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR DRUG INDUSTRY

Vietnam has unveiled a new 10-year pharmaceuticals development plan, which envisages boosting the domestic sector's market share from 40% to 60% by 2015. Officials hope the strategy will reduce the country's dependence on imported raw materials and finished drugs. In the first five months of 2005, drug imports in Ho Chi Minh City alone totalled US$98mn.

Vietnamese health ministry officials now plan to set up three new state-owned manufacturing facilities in the north, south and centre of the country. As well as supplying local hospitals, the plants will also apparently "regulate" the local market. Additionally, the government intends to build two new R&D centres at a cost of roughly US$3mn, and promote traditional medicines, which officials expect to account for 30% of the local market by 2015.

It is likely that the new initiative will support the existing domestic industry, most of which is in state hands and already enjoys favourable regulation. The government has also acted to restrain soaring prices in recent months, mainly in exchange for more modern registration and marketing procedures for foreign firms' products.