With its large population, Vietnam is recognised as a potential market offering many opportunities for foreign investors in medicine and health care.

The comment was made by Allan Yeo, Chief Executive of the Happy Hospital under Singapore’s Thomson Medical Centre, which is planning to expand investment in Vietnam.

In comparison with other fields like finance, securities and real estate, the health service was a less lively field in the panorama of foreign investment in Vietnam.

Dau Tu (Investment) newspaper on August 8 said that foreign investment inflow in Vietnam’s health sector had been boosted with information on the Indian group Fortis Healthcare intending to buy 50 percent of shares of Ho Chi Minh City’s Hoan My Medical Group through an agreement worth 100 million USD.

If successful, the transaction would help Fortis Healthcare to increase its presence in Asia, where the Economist Magazine’s EIU forecast the per capita expenditure for health services to increase 55 percent in the 2010-2015 period.

Many foreign investors have operated effectively in Vietnam’s health sector and expanded their scale of operation, for example the Vien Dong Co. Ltd, which invested in the France-Vietnam Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, and the Thomson Medical Centre with its Happy Hospital.

According to Allan Yeo, among foreign investors involving Vietnam’s health service, Singapore is considered the country with the greatest potential.

Recently, Parkway Health of Singapore, Asia’s leading private medical group, entered the Vietnam market by becoming manager of the HCM City high-tech health centre, invested by the Hoa Lam-Shangri-La joint venture./.