It was revealed at a meeting when a delegation from the Ministry of Finance conducted a survey on the implementation of the financial mechanism and management costs of social, health and unemployment insurance in the 2019-21 period.

The difficulties include no financial support mechanism for members of the Steering Committee to implement the policies at all levels; and no regulations on financial support for grassroots officials in mobilising people to participate in voluntary social insurance.

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There are also difficulties in mobilising pensioners and social insurance beneficiaries to receive payments through non-cash payment means in the province.

The branches of the Viet Nam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank) and the Viet Nam State Treasury have yet to complete a compatible bilateral electronic payment system, so the accounting staff of the social insurance branch still have to manually perform transactions of receiving and entering receipts of payments of social, health and unemployment insurance premiums, causing a high workload.

Also at the meeting, the branch’s representative reported that it has already promoted administrative reform, finished and exceeded the assigned targets in the collection and development of participants of social, health and unemployment insurance and ensured benefits for the participants in the period.

The branch’s representative said the financial mechanism of Viet Nam Social Security is following Decision No 60/2015/QD-TTg and Decision No 38/2019/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister with full and clear contents and norms of expenditure, creating favourable conditions for the implementation of key tasks of revenue and expenditure; increasing social and health participants; creating favourable conditions for fund management in accordance with current regulations as well as creating sources to set aside funds to stabilise income to ensure the lives of public servants and employees working in the social insurance sector.

Currently, the requirements of the social insurance branch have been increasing, while the number of staff of the branch has decreased because many reached retirement age, therefore, the branch submitted to maintain the current level of salary expenditure for civil servants and employees.

Vu Thi Hai Yen, deputy director of the finance ministry’s Department of Finance and Administration and head of the delegation, recognised the efforts of the branch in the implementation of policies on social, health and unemployment insurance in the province in the 2019-2021 period and the difficulties that the branch faced.

She also received recommendations and proposals from the branch to deal with the difficulties./.