Deputy Director of the Viet Nam Social Security Tran Dinh Lieu said a total of 6,000 people signed up for voluntary social security in 2008. The number reached 320,000 last year, and by June this year, it was 420,000, a very rapid rise compared with previous years.

One reason for the increase was that since last year, the State has contributed towards the social security fund for different groups of people, including 30 percent for poor and ethnic minority people, 25 percent for near-poor people and 10 percent for others.

However, Deputy Director Lieu said that the 10 percent contribution was not attractive enough to encourage people to sign up. 

Differing from trade insurance, voluntary social insurance is a social welfare policy. To raise its attractiveness, more support and encouragement from the State was needed.

“We have a policy of health insurance for everyone in line with the Resolution No 28-NQ-TW issued by the 12th Central Committee of the Communist Party of Viet Nam on social insurance for all, thus supporting and increasing the policy’s attractiveness is very important,” said Lieu.

Regarding the issue, Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly’s Social Affairs Committee Bui Sy Loi said voluntary social insurance was a preeminent and humanitarian policy of the State and the Party for informal workers.

However, after more than 10 years of implementation, the number of people signing up was still limited.

The first reason was that the voluntary social insurance policy was not interesting enough for residents, he said. 

The residents often see that compulsory social insurance has five regimes, but voluntary social insurance has just two, including retirement regime and survivorship allowance regime.

Most people did not understand that they enjoyed five benefits because they contributed money for these five regimes, and enjoyed two because they contributed money for two regimes. But the difference still created negative comparisons and thus reduced the attractiveness of voluntary social security, said Loi.

One more reason was that financial support from the State for participants was not high enough, he added.

Loi proposed that in the initial period of conducting voluntary social insurance scheme, the State should raise the level of support to encourage people to join. Higher level of support should be given to poor and near-poor people. 

In the long term, the early support means that the State will not have to pay for the people when they get old or get ill.

Viet Nam already has experience in raising support for health insurance with significant success and the coverage increased quickly.

In addition to raising the level of support, Deputy Chairman Loi proposed to re-design the voluntary social insurance policy, with the inclusion of the health insurance policy so that when people sign up for voluntary social insurance, they will have health insurance cards at the same time. Maternity and sickness regimes should also be added to social insurance policy to attract more people. 

The work can be done by increasing the State’s support for people joining voluntary social security. 

At present, the country has supportive policies for certain groups of impoverished people while giving birth or getting sick, and the support should continue if they pay voluntary social insurance premiums, he said./.