Burden of social welfare reduced towards sustainable development

After 4 years of implementation, the 12th Party Central Committee’s Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW dated May 23, 2018 on reforming social insurance policies has come into life and spread strongly among people from all strata. Up to now, the implementation of social insurance policies has achieved some positive results. The number of people participating in social insurance has increased steadily over years. However, the coverage of social insurance participants has not been as expected, and a synchronous solution is needed to continue increasing the coverage.

The Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW on reforming social insurance policies was born with the goal of making social insurance become the mainstay of the social welfare system. Among the social insurance policies revised in the spirit of Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW, the policy to put groups of business household heads, business managers, managers and executives of cooperatives without salary, employees working under flexible regimes... participating in compulsory social insurance has opened up a great way to increase the coverage of participants. Along with that, Vietnam Social Insurance and localities have implemented many synchronous solutions to increase the number of those participating in voluntary social insurance in the informal labor group.

As a result, by the end of 2019, only after over a year of implementing the resolution, the number of people participating in voluntary social insurance nationwide increased by nearly 300,000, equivalent to the number of those participating in voluntary social insurance of the previous 11 years. From 2020 to now, developing the number of people participating in voluntary social insurance has encountered many difficulties, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, but this has still achieved impressive results. According to statistics, as of June 2022, the whole country had 16.74 million people participating in social insurance, an increase of 193,800 compared to late 2021. Among them, the number of people participating in voluntary social insurance was over 1.3 million people, an increase of 170,900 compared to the same period in 2021.

Along with the above-mentioned positive results, the work of developing social insurance participants in the spirit of the Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW has still faced some difficulties such as: The system of policies and laws on social insurance in the process of implementation has revealed a number of shortcomings for change; the current social insurance policy still omits some groups of people who have the need and ability, but have not been legislated for participation; the policy of voluntary social insurance is not really attractive to participants; the number of people receiving one-time social insurance continues increasing; the situation of arrears, fraud, and profiteering from the Social Insurance Fund still occurs. These shortcomings have hindered the progress of expanding coverage towards national social insurance.

For social insurance truly becoming the mainstay of the social welfare system, a solid foundation for each family, it is necessary for the sector to quickly overcome the above-mentioned shortcomings. To do this, the system of social insurance agencies should further make recommendations to improve policies and laws on social insurance; improve the spirit and attitude of service to ensure the best interests of social insurance participants. For localities, they need to promote communication work to raise enterprises and people’s awareness of social insurance participation.

Reported by Le Quang-Translated by Kim Tin