In 2008, the first year the voluntary social security policy was applied across the country, there were only 6,000 participants. In 2018, the number of participants increased to 320,000 with financial support from the State, which ranges from between 30 to 60 percent of fees.

Viet Nam Social Security reported that an additional 192,326 people joined the voluntary social security scheme in the past three quarters of 2019, raising the total number of participants to 463,105. In particular, many localities exceeded the set target in the number of participants, including Son La, Hung Yen, Ca Mau, Ha Nam and Dien Bien.

Deputy General Director of Viet Nam Social Security, Tran Dinh Lieu, said the positive results are attributed to the implementation of many measures, including the organisation of thousands of conferences in localities to disseminate information and the opening of training courses for social security officers at different levels, although no locality has so far provided more support for voluntary social security participants. Viet Nam Social Security branches at all levels have actively co-ordinated with social security agents to increase information dissemination and mobilise people to sign up for the voluntary social security scheme with the motto “going to every household and meeting every resident” to increase the number of participants.

Tran Hai Nam, deputy director of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ Social Security Department, said with this result, it is likely the target of having 1 percent of the workforce joining voluntary social security by 2021 following Resolution 28-NQ/TW would be met. However, he said, challenges remained to reach the target of 2.5 percent by 2025.

He explained that, in fact, although the voluntary social security policy offers many benefits for participants, the implementation still faces difficulties. These participants often do not have stable jobs, so it is hard to earmark a part of their incomes for social security. Meanwhile, financial assistance for them to buy social security remains low, failing to encourage people to join. Also, getting access to potential targets to disseminate information and encourage them to join remains ineffective.

In order to make the social security policy more attractive, Nam suggested to continue disseminating information and mobilising people to join and set a quota for localities to increase the number of their voluntary social security participants. Also, it is necessary to promote labour movement from the non-official sector to the official sector to create stable jobs, which will in turn create conditions for people to join social security coverage.

Finally, it is necessary to amend, supplement and complete related policies and regulations towards reducing the time of social security contribution from 20 years to 15 years to get retirement pensions, and gradually to 10 years, with the aim of creating more conditions for people to get access to their pensions.

Bui Sy Loi, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs, recommended that initially, it is important to increase the support rate to “boost demand”. Accordingly, the State should offer a financial assistance of up to 50 percent of voluntary social security fees. Poor and nearly poor households should get higher rates. This support will help to extend the coverage of voluntary social security and it then will be gradually reduced. 

“We need to learn a lesson from the health insurance policy. At first, not so many people joined the health security scheme because of low support. The policy then increased the support rate which has resulted in nearly 90 percent of the population signing up for health insurance,” he said.

It can also “merge” voluntary health insurance with voluntary social insurance so people will have health insurance when they buy voluntary social security, he said./.