Key Development
Vietnamese-made medicines already account for roughly 70% of domestic consumption by volume, yet less than half of market value. That gap says more about the industry’s next challenge than any “Make in Vietnam” slogan. Vietnam has built meaningful pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. The harder task is moving from volume toward intellectual property, technology and higher-value products.
On September 18, 2026, the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST), Ben Tre Pharmaceutical (Bepharco), Quang Trung University, Hue International General Hospital and Viet My Phu Yen Hospital signed a memorandum intended to connect scientific research, workforce development and technology transfer with manufacturing, clinical application and commercialization. For Bepharco, the proposed areas include pharmaceuticals, traditional medicines, health products and medical devices; the hospital partnerships also contemplate applications involving biotechnology, AI, healthcare data and biomedical materials.
This remains a cooperation framework, not a confirmed product pipeline or evidence that internationally competitive products are already emerging. What makes it strategically relevant is its attempt to address a persistent weakness in Vietnam’s health-innovation ecosystem: the distance between research output and commercial execution.
Why It Matters
- Vietnam has manufacturing scale, but the value mix remains lower. The number of pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities increased from 167 in 2016 to 243 in 2025. Yet the disparity between domestic medicines’ share by volume and by value suggests substantial room to move into more technology-intensive segments.
- Raw-material dependence remains a structural vulnerability. Domestic sources account for only about 5.2% of active pharmaceutical ingredients and 9.8% of excipients used in drug production, according to the Ministry of Health. Manufacturing a finished product domestically therefore does not necessarily mean controlling its underlying value chain.
- Exports are not yet the industry’s primary growth engine. Pharmaceutical exports reached approximately $312 million in 2025, while Vietnam’s domestic pharmaceutical market had exceeded $7 billion in 2024. The figures represent different periods and should not be interpreted as a direct market-share comparison, but they illustrate how domestically oriented the industry’s economics remain.
- National policy is pushing in the same direction. Vietnam aims to develop a modern pharmaceutical-chemical industry capable of participating competitively in global pharmaceutical value chains by 2045, with a 2030 target of supplying 20% of the country’s pharmaceutical raw-material demand.
Healthcare Insight Analysis
Healthcare Insight’s central view is that the value of this partnership will not be determined by forming another research consortium. It will depend on whether the partners can close the translation gap between science and a commercial pharmaceutical asset.
Vietnam does not lack universities, institutes, factories or hospitals. The harder problem lies at the interfaces between them.
A laboratory discovery must survive formulation development, scale-up, validation, intellectual-property strategy, regulatory documentation, clinical or bioequivalence requirements where applicable, manufacturing economics and market access before it becomes a commercial product.
Each transition is a point of potential failure.
On paper, the VAST–Bepharco–university–hospital model brings complementary capabilities closer together. VAST contributes scientific and technological knowledge. Bepharco can provide investment, manufacturing and commercialization. The university contributes talent development. Hospitals can provide a pathway toward real-world clinical application.
But signing an MOU is materially easier than creating a pharmaceutical asset that can clear an international regulatory review.
If overseas markets are the genuine objective, success should ultimately be measured not by the number of research projects or prototype products, but by defensible patents, internationally acceptable dossiers, appropriate bioequivalence or clinical evidence, manufacturing quality recognized by destination markets and, eventually, overseas revenue.
That distinction matters because “Make in Vietnam” can mean two very different things.
At its lowest level, it means final manufacturing occurs inside Vietnam. At a higher-value level, it means technology is developed domestically, intellectual property is controlled domestically, manufacturing know-how is retained locally and the resulting product can cross another country’s regulatory gate.
The second model captures substantially more economic value.
Market Implications
Pharmaceutical manufacturers: companies capable of absorbing technology, financing longer R&D cycles and converting research into registered products stand to benefit most. Commodity manufacturers relying primarily on cost and production capacity will face greater pressure to upgrade.
Research institutes and universities: performance metrics may need to move beyond publications and research projects toward patents, licenses, spin-offs and commercially deployed technologies.
Hospitals: providers can become important platforms for applied research, data generation and technology evaluation, but only if research governance and evidence standards are sufficiently robust.
Investors: two indicators matter more than additional partnership announcements: how many projects advance from research into genuine development candidates, and how many resulting products eventually secure international registrations or generate non-Vietnam revenue.
If those indicators begin to materialize, “Make in Vietnam” will have moved beyond industrial policy. It will represent something more valuable: Vietnam exporting pharmaceutical innovation and intellectual value, not merely finished dosage forms.