Chairing the seminar,  Deputy General Director of Vietnam Social Security (VSS) Le Hung Son said that it was very important to get opinions from experts on the proposed amendments to the Law on Social Insurance as the social insurance industry was developing a new Law on Social Insurance.

Regarding a number of contents in the draft of the law, VSS asked for the advice of experts on issues like the development of participants in social insurance in Vietnam.

According to VSS, the work is difficult as employees’ incomes remain low.

It is also difficult to have employees join enterprises in paying social insurance premiums.

Deputy General Director of Vietnam Social Security Le Hung Son chaired the seminar to consult with international experts about proposed amendments to the Law on Social Insurance.

Son also said VSS urgently needed the advice of WB experts on how the roadmap to reduce the retirement age would affect the behaviour of employees.

In particular, in recent years, Vietnam has had about 120,000 pensioners, but also about 800,000 people receive one-time social insurance and are facing difficulties in policy design.

It is not possible to use legal restrictions but through feasible solutions, VSS expects to know how to design the benefit levels.

It is proposed that employees who want to claim benefits will recieve the sum paid by the employees themselves, while the sum paid by the enterprise will be retained in the social insurance fund so that employees are encouraged to return to work and continue to participate in social insurance.

Regarding the issue that the salary paid for social insurance is lower than actually received, Robert Palacios, Head of the global group on retirement and social insurance (WB), said that not only in Vietnam but also in other countries, it seems that enterprises use the basic salary to pay social insurance while the other payments are still paid to employees. Therefore, we need to define salary as the basis for correct calculation and this can only be solved with legal regulations.

VSS has digitised different processes of collection and payment of social insurance, but it is also necessary to compare how employees pay personal income tax with the payment of social insurance. The tax payment needs to be reviewed on the employee's payroll.

Usually, tax payments to the tax authority are larger than the sum paid to social insurance agencies because current regulations are not strict, the report is wrong or the income is too low compared to the actual salary to pay to the social insurance agency.

Mr. Robert Palacios, senior expert on social security from the World Bank.

Regarding the development of voluntary social insurance, the World Bank expert said that voluntary private pensions are gradually expanding and applied to low-income groups, expanding insurance coverage for workers who are at the bottom of the informal sector.

At the conference, delegates, as well as WB experts, discussed issues related to the current implementation of social insurance policies.

They agreed that amendments to the Law on Social Insurance should include a policy for cases in which employees pay social insurance for 5-10 years so that they can receive a fixed salary when they reach retirement age.

It is also necessary to design policies so that employees do not apply for early retirement, increase the coverage of social pensions through the State's support for people of a certain age, so that after they retire, the state does not have to pay social allowances.

It is necessary to develop a database of workers in the informal sector to engage them in the social insurance system. This database must originate from the basic system of the Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs sector and the population database of the Ministry of Public Security.

At the end of the seminar, Deputy General Director Le Hung Son thanked WB experts for their advice and affirmed that this was very useful to VSS in developing mechanisms in the upcoming amendments to the Law on Social Insurance. The Deputy General Director hopes that in the future, the two sides will continue to exchange, share experiences, and perfect the new Law on Social Insurance effectively./.