PURPOSE: To prepare a highly pure aminoalcohol in high yield by hydrogenating a halonitroalcohol in the presence of methanol, an appropriate buffering agent and a hydrogenation catalyst, then neutralizing the obtained aminoalcohol salt followed by recovering.

CONSTITUTION: The objective aminoalcohol is obtained by hydrogenating a halonitroalcohol (especially, preferably 2-bromo-2-nitro-1,3-propanediol or the like) in one step in the presence of methanol, an appropriate buffering agent (especially, preferably ammonia) and a hydrogenation catalyst (especially, preferably Raney nickel, Pd-carbon) to obtain an acid salt of aminoalcohol, then treating the resulting salt with an alkaline substance (especially, preferably an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide), and recovering the formed aminoalcohol (especially, preferably 2-amino-1,3-propandiol or the like) of the formula (R3 is H or an alkyl) by distillation or the like. The aminoalcohol is useful for preparing a radiopaque agent. This production method can be operated with either process of a batch-wise process or semi-continuous process. The reaction proceeds under mild conditions.