(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s Perennial Holdings Pte. said it’s secured the first license to operate a fully foreign-owned hospital in China, after Beijing removed some investment curbs in its healthcare sector to attract investment.
Perennial’s new general hospital, with a total investment of 1 billion yuan ($137 million), will open in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin soon, the company said in a statement this week. The hospital adds to the company’s existing medical facilities and an elderly nursing home in a campus next to the city’s high-speed railway station.
The Singapore healthcare group’s expansion in China comes after the world’s No. 2 economy eased restrictions on foreign investment in sectors including manufacturing and medical care in September. While Beijing has mostly relied on its massive network of public hospitals to provide medical services to the country’s 1.4 billion people, private healthcare providers — both local and foreign — primarily serve the needs of elite customers that pay out of their own pocket or through commercial insurance.
The government of Southern Chinese city Shenzhen also announced this month that another Singapore-based company, Luye Medical Group, has signed an agreement with its health commission to build a specialty hospital.
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