Participants included Vice Chairman of the Management Board of VSS Nguyen Van Cuong, VSS Deputy Director Generals Tran Dinh Lieu and Dao Viet Anh, as well as heads of units.

VSS Director General Nguyen The Manh chairs the meeting

Positive results

At the meeting, VSS Chief of Staff Chu Manh Sinh reported that in the past eight months, the whole social insurance industry continued to actively and proactively coordinate with relevant ministries and agencies in building and amending important draft laws and documents relating to the implementation of social insurance and health insurance policies.

VSS issued many documents to direct and guide professional activities; organised meetings, conferences and training workshops; sent delegations to work with social insurance agencies of all 63 provinces and cities to encourage and help tackle difficulties in collecting insurance premiums and debts, developing social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance participants and medical examination and treatment covered by the health insurance.

Information dissemination and communication tasks were enhanced and diversified in terms of communication contents and methods.

The sector has also gained positive results in inspections, administrative reform, application of information technology and digital transformation.

As of August 2022, the whole country had over 17.1 million social insurance participants, equivalent to 89.47 per cent of the yearly target and representing a year-on-year increase of 2.36 per cent. The number of health insurance participants increased by more than 1.7 million in comparison with 2021. Total collection of social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance premiums reached nearly VND270 trillion, up 4.04 per cent in comparison with the same period last year.

Heads of units of the VSS speak at the meeting

As of August 23, 2022, the whole country had 26,482,644 personal online accounts registered and approved to use the VssID application. The VSS shared more than 37,947,723 documents relating to information about social insurance and health insurance with the national database on population.

Difficulties and solutions

Apart from achievements, participants also discussed difficulties and obstacles in implementing assigned tasks and targets.

Head of the VSS Department of Contribution Collection – Insurance Book and Card Duong Van Hao said in August, the collection of social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance contribution and development of participants gained positive results with an increase in all figures but the increase was still modest.

Social insurance agencies of localities consulted with local People’s Committees to assign the targets of developing participants to districts and communes for implementation. But most of the localities only focused on assigning the targets to districts and only 10 provinces assigned the targets to communes.

In the collection of insurance contributions, localities needed to improve quality and pay more attention to training to have enough human resources.

Leaders of social insurance agencies of localities speak at the meeting

Hao asked social insurance agencies of localities to closely follow guiding documents of the VSS relating to collection and development of participants.

He also reported the results of the working sessions held with social insurance agencies of 63 localities, including discussing difficulties and solutions.

Speaking at the meeting, Head of the Health Insurance Policy Implementation Department of the VSS Le Van Phuc noted that some localities had an amount of spending on medical examination and treatment covered by health insurance higher than the national average. These localities needed to have specific plans to supervise and control the spending. He asked social agencies of localities to continue to coordinate with local health departments to tackle difficulties and carry out bidding and purchase of medicines used in medical examination and treatment covered by the health insurance.

A representative from the VSS Department of Finance and Account reported on the final settlement and estimate of the sector.

Heads of other units of the VSS also recommended social insurance agencies of localities enhance communication; speed up the implementation of support policies from the unemployment insurance fund; and increase to receive and handling of related dossiers via the one-door system.

At the meeting, the directors of social insurance agencies of Ha Noi, HCM City, An Giang, Binh Duong and Thanh Hoa briefed on the results of implementing their assigned tasks.

Vice Chairman of the Management Board of the VSS Nguyen Van Cuong speaks at the meeting

The Head of the Ha Noi Social Insurance proposed the VSS study and coordinate with the Ministry of Education and Training to issue a document directing the implementation of health insurance policies for students in the city to increase the number of participants, which currently failed to meet the target.

The city faced difficulties in implementing support policies from the unemployment insurance fund for workers facing difficulties due to the impacts of COVID-19.  The city committed to having effective measures to ensure the progress of the implementation as scheduled.

The leader of the HCM City Social Security also pointed out some challenges, particularly in increasing the number of participants and in tasks relating to medical examination and treatment covered by health insurance. However, the agency has seriously followed directions from the VSS Director General and has fulfilled six out of 25 assigned tasks. The city will try to complete the remaining tasks as soon as possible, helping the social insurance agency gain positive results in implementing social insurance and health insurance policies in 2022.

Greater determination for the remaining months

Vice Chairman of the Management Board of the VSS Nguyen Van Cuong assessed results gained after supervising the implementation of social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance policies in some localities recently. He asked social insurance agencies of localities to closely follow the recommendations of supervision delegations of the VSS to implement social security policies more effectively.

Concluding the meeting, VSS Director General Nguyen The Manh spoke highly of the efforts of the whole sector in implementing tasks in the past eight months of 2022.

 VSS Director General Nguyen The Manh speaks at the meeting

However, Manh said difficulties remained for the sector in fulfilling tasks in the remaining months of the year. Therefore, he asked the whole sector to closely follow the policies and orientations of the Party, National Assembly and Government and actively coordinate with relevant ministries and agencies to amend related laws and deal with shortcomings.

The whole sector also needed to continue to implement comprehensive solutions in order to fulfill set targets, including increasing the number of social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance participants; enhancing the collection of insurance premiums and debts; ensuring benefits of participants; strengthening inspection and supervision; and exploiting and maximising the use of information technology, he said.

He suggested the sector speed up the implementation of support policies for workers from the unemployment insurance fund; review and simplify administrative procedures to create conditions for people and businesses; promote digital transformation; and improve the efficiency of communication./.