The Ministry of Justice's electronic information portal posted that on the afternoon of June 12, the Ministry of Justice held a meeting to review the draft Law on Social Insurance (amended). Deputy Minister Dang Hoang Oanh chaired the review session. Deputy Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Ba Hoan also attended the meeting.
Ensuring social security and international integration
Speaking at the meeting, a representative of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs affirmed that after more than 7 years of implementation, the Law on Social Insurance (SI) 2014 has come into effect, affirming the correctness of the social insurance policy and regime according to the contribution-benefit principle, meeting the aspirations of the majority of workers, ensuring social security and international integration.
Specifically, the number of social insurance participants has increased gradually over the years, from 13.06 million participants in 2016 to nearly 16.55 million participants in 2021 (an increase of 26.72% compared to 2016). Of which, the number of voluntary social insurance participants has increased sharply from about 0.2 million participants in 2016 to nearly 1.45 million participants in 2021, accounting for 3.25% of the working-age workforce (an increase of 7.25 times compared to 2016); exceeding the target set "by 2021, 1% of the working-age workforce will participate in voluntary social insurance" in Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW.
However, in addition to the achieved results, the implementation of the 2014 Social Insurance Law also revealed some shortcomings, limitations and inadequacies such as: the coverage of participants and beneficiaries of social insurance in reality is still low compared to the potential; compliance with the law on social insurance is still low, there are still cases of late payment and evasion of social insurance payment in many localities and enterprises; voluntary social insurance policies are not really attractive to people to participate; some regulations are no longer suitable to the current context and practical conditions;...
Therefore, the amendment of the 2014 Social Insurance Law is very necessary to ensure social security for people based on human rights as prescribed by the Constitution and institutionalize the contents of Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW in a diversified, flexible, multi-layered, modern, internationally integrated direction, towards social insurance coverage for the entire workforce; expand and increase rights and benefits, create attractiveness to attract employees to participate in social insurance; best ensure the rights of working employees and pensioners.
In addition, this draft Law on Social Insurance will fundamentally amend the difficulties and shortcomings arising from the practical implementation of the Law on Social Insurance 2014 and Resolution No. 93/2015/QH13; ensure constitutionality, legality, consistency, uniformity, feasibility, compliance with international standards and ensure gender equality; aim to perfect the State management regulations and the professional, modern, effective, public and transparent implementation organization system.
The revised Law on Social Insurance has closely followed 5 major policies and contents to ensure social security.
Strengthening communication of social insurance policies
Affirming that the Law on Social Insurance (amended) is one of the draft laws that has received much attention from the people, the National Assembly and voters, the representative of Vietnam Social Insurance highly appreciated the preparation of the dossier by the drafting agency. However, he suggested that the drafting agency should complete and "reinforce" the content of the Summary Report on the Implementation of the Law on Social Insurance in 2014, specifically, it must comprehensively, objectively and comprehensively assess the subjective and objective causes leading to the situation of delayed payment and prolonged evasion of social insurance payment in order to find solutions to overcome the situation.
In addition, to successfully implement the multi-layered and flexible social insurance policy, based on the objective of Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW "Developing a flexible, diverse, multi-layered, modern and internationally integrated social insurance system based on the principles of contribution - benefit, fairness, equality, sharing and sustainability. Improving the capacity, effectiveness and efficiency of State management and developing a streamlined, professional, modern, reliable and transparent social insurance policy implementation system", the drafting agency needs to clarify the content of the policies regulating the layers of this system; further study the roadmap for the State budget to pay benefits for people aged 80 and over instead of supporting part of the social insurance contributions for workers while they are still of working age.
The representative of Vietnam Social Security added that the regulation on receiving one-time social insurance benefits under the 2014 Social Insurance Law has caused some consequences, affecting the goal of ensuring sustainable social security for the people, so this representative agreed with the amendment according to Option 2 of the Ministry of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs, and proposed to adjust Option 2 in the direction of removing the regulation of waiting after 12 months, specifically "If the employee has less than 15 years of social insurance contributions and has a request, a part of the payment will be resolved, but not exceeding 50% of the total time contributed to the pension and death fund. The remaining social insurance payment period will be reserved to receive social insurance benefits when reaching retirement age. This reserved period will not be counted for the next one-time social insurance payment, except for the cases specified in points a, b, c, d of this clause".
Regarding social pension benefits, the representative of the Ministry of Finance assessed that the specific regulation of monthly social pension benefits for subjects meeting the conditions for receiving a subsidy of VND 500,000/person/month is not appropriate. He proposed adjusting the standard level of social assistance depending on the balance of the State budget, the rate of increase in consumer prices and the living conditions of social protection subjects, ensuring policy correlation with other subjects, accordingly, it should be amended in the direction of only regulating the conditions and regimes for social pension beneficiaries; the specific expenditure level is assigned to the Government to regulate.
Regarding the regime for employees who are not eligible for pension and are not old enough to receive social pension benefits, this is a new social insurance policy added in the draft Law on Social Insurance this time. However, the draft does not clearly state how to calculate the benefit level and the duration of this policy. If the benefit level is not much different from the pension level, employees will tend to choose to participate for a period just long enough to not be eligible for pension but receive monthly benefits, and continue to receive social pension benefits when they are old enough to receive social pension benefits; therefore, it will not encourage employees to participate in voluntary social insurance. Therefore, the comrade suggested that the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs carefully study this policy, propose specific methods for calculating the benefit level and duration, ensuring the principle of contribution - enjoyment, not conflicting with the social pension policy and not negatively affecting the policy of encouraging voluntary social insurance.
Synthesizing the opinions at the meeting, Deputy Minister of Justice Dang Hoang Oanh assessed that the content of the Basic Law project is consistent with the Party's guidelines and policies and the State's policies; concretizes the provisions of Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW dated May 23, 2018 on reforming social insurance policies, Documents of the 13th National Congress of the Party; ensures the constitutionality, legality, and consistency of the draft with the legal system; and is consistent with international commitments to which Vietnam is a member.
To complete the draft Law on Social Insurance, the Deputy Minister requested the drafting agency to consider and adjust some contents. Firstly, regarding the regulations on monthly social pension allowances (VND 500,000/person/month) and funeral allowances (VND 10,000,000) in the draft Law, the Deputy Minister requested the drafting agency to explain the basis and basis for regulating the above allowance levels; at the same time, propose to assign the Government to regulate this allowance level to ensure flexibility and suitability with the actual situation.
Second, regarding the provisions on the Social Insurance Management Board and the duties and powers of the Social Insurance Management Board, compared to the 2014 Social Insurance Law (Clause 1, Article 94), the draft Social Insurance Law (amended) has removed the provisions on the responsibility of directing, supervising and advising on health insurance and unemployment insurance policies of the Social Insurance Management Board; removed the representative of the State management agency on health insurance from the Social Insurance Management Board; and stipulated that the Chairman of the Board is the Deputy Prime Minister. Provisions such as the draft Social Insurance Law (amended) may lead to the requirement to establish Unemployment Insurance Management Boards and Health Insurance Management Boards to perform the above tasks. Therefore, the Deputy Minister suggested that the drafting agency should consider adjusting this provision.
Third, the Deputy Minister emphasized that one-time social insurance is a major policy and a complicated issue; the implementation of this solution may result in a lower one-time social insurance benefit than the current benefit level. Therefore, the drafting agency must research, analyze, and carefully evaluate the impact of each option, its own viewpoint, and review and supplement more specific and detailed regulations for Point d, Clause 1, Article 77 of the draft Law; at the same time, strengthen the communication of the one-time social insurance policy.
In addition, the Deputy Minister suggested that the drafting committee consider and adjust some other contents such as: removing regulations under specialized laws such as those related to inspection, handling of administrative violations, complaints and denunciations; reviewing and adjusting regulations assigned to the Government for guidance; regulating the responsibilities of management agencies to improve the effectiveness of State management in the field of social insurance; supplementing specific regulations for the armed forces...
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