Export of Korean medical devices to Vietnam to be easier

South Korea's Ministry of Food and Drug Safety announced on Thursday that the public procurement regulations of the Vietnamese government, which had previously acted as a barrier to exporting domestic medical devices to Vietnam, have been abolished.

According to the ministry, the Vietnamese Ministry of Health scrapped the regulations on April 14, which had categorized countries by grade when publicly bidding for medical devices in Vietnam.

Under this regulation, which was implemented in Vietnam from Sept. 2020, Korea had been given the lowest grade of 6 when selling medical devices in the Southeast Asian country.

As a result, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety and the Korean Embassy in Vietnam had continuously requested a change in the scheme to the Vietnamese ministry, and diplomatic efforts had been made at the intergovernmental level, including the Joint Statement of the Korea-Vietnam Summit Meeting in Dec. last year.

"With the abolition of the public procurement regulations, there is expected to be significant progress in entering the Vietnamese market with excellent domestic medical devices that will no longer be subject to bidding grade classification," said a ministry official.

According to the ministry, Korea's medical device export to Vietnam was valued at $499 million (660 billion won) as of 2021.

Write to Jeong-Min Nam at peux@hankyung.com