Some Recommendations for Perfecting Legal Regulations on Compulsory Social Insurance and Retirement Insurance

is only 54.2 (55.6 for men and 52.6 for women). This leads to a short period of social insurance participation (the average number of years of contribution for men is 28, for women is 23), while the retirement period is long (22.6 years for men on average, 27 years for women) [15]. This is one of the pressures that create a burden for the social insurance fund.

Second, the rate of participation in social insurance is still low, and the coverage of social insurance increases slowly. Although, in terms of social insurance policy, it has covered the entire workforce, the development of subjects participating in compulsory social insurance to enjoy the social insurance regime in reality is still very limited, the growth rate is still slow. In 2007, the number of participants was 8,172,502 people, by 2017 it was 13,591,492 people, accounting for about 28.2% of the workforce of working age and has not covered subjects receiving salaries but not under labor contracts, managers and executives who do not receive salaries or poor areas near the border, micro-enterprises who are subjects participating in compulsory social insurance.

Third , according to the 2014 Social Insurance Law, the regulations for receiving pensions are not reasonable. According to the regulations, the minimum period of 20 years of social insurance contributions to receive pensions is too long, most countries often stipulate lower, about 10 years. In addition, the accumulation rate of 2% for 1 additional year of social insurance contributions after meeting the conditions for contributions to receive pensions and the maximum benefit of 75% is quite high while internationally it is only about 1.5% for each additional year and the maximum benefit is about 60%. With current social insurance policies and regimes, there will be a risk of imbalance in the pension and death benefit funds in the long term, while the tight investment of funds has not brought high efficiency.

Fourth , the current problem is that the social insurance debt situation is still complicated in many enterprises and localities and the debt ratio is still high. Social insurance debt has decreased compared to a number of previous years, but the debt ratio is still high in enterprises. The work of suing enterprises that owe social insurance contributions has been strengthened, but the efficiency of collecting social insurance debt has not been improved.

High. The union organization's lawsuit against the employer for social insurance debt is still confused and not bold enough to fight. By the end of 2017, the total compulsory social insurance debt was 5,735 billion VND, down 0.8% compared to 2016, equal to 2.93% of the amount to be collected. The sanction for the act of evading payment and owing social insurance for a long time is only at the level of administrative violation with the fine not really high, not enough to deter. The 2015 Penal Code has added the crime of evading social insurance payment, effective from January 1, 2018. However, the implementation must be carried out in stages, with a roadmap because criminal prosecution has a great impact on employees in the enterprise. Because when an enterprise is prosecuted, of course the enterprise stops production activities, causing employees to lose their jobs.

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Fifth , the number of people receiving one-time social insurance or retiring early due to reduced working capacity has not been limited. Currently, the conditions for early retirement are still widespread while medical examination is not well controlled, leading to a low average retirement age. According to the provisions of the Law on Social Insurance 2014, the level of reduced working capacity is the basis and condition for receiving monthly social insurance. Accurate assessment of the level of reduced working capacity for employees is extremely important, as a basis for social insurance agencies to resolve the regime, ensuring the rights of employees in accordance with the provisions of the law on social insurance, at the same time helping the State manage and use human resources effectively, manage and use the social insurance fund to pay the right subjects, ensuring sustainable social security. However, the number of employees retiring early due to reduced working capacity in recent years has tended to increase. The number of people receiving one-time social insurance continues to increase compared to previous years. In the 10 years from 2007 to 2016, there were about 5 million people nationwide who received one-time social insurance benefits. This is also a factor that reduces the social insurance coverage rate. In order to limit the above situation, the Social Insurance Law of 2014 has more stringent regulations on conditions for early retirement due to reduced working capacity such as: increasing the pension deduction rate due to early retirement to 2% instead of 1% as previously regulated,

For male workers aged 50 and over, and female workers aged 45 and over with 20 years or more of social insurance contributions, the level of work capacity loss must be 81% or more (before 2016, the regulation was 61% or more) [17, Article 56]. Although the regulation has been raised like this, when these workers were presented to the Medical Assessment Council, they all had work capacity loss results of 61% or 81% or more as desired by the workers.

Sixth, the pension calculation method is still unreasonable, leading to a large difference in pensions, affecting the psychology of employees. From January 1, 2018, the 2014 Social Insurance Law stipulates changes in the pension calculation method for female employees, which has led to comparisons between female employees and male employees, between female employees retiring later and female employees retiring before January 1, 2018. Because the pension calculation formula for men is applied but has a roadmap for gradual change within 5 years, while for women it is applied immediately in 2018, it leads to some female employees retiring in 2018 having a lower pension rate than those with the same social insurance contribution period retiring in 2017 from 1% to 10%. This creates a comparison between female and male workers (male workers only decreased by 1% to 2%), between retirees before and after January 1, 2018.

Seventh , the work of information, propaganda and dissemination of laws has had many changes but has not had a strong impact on the development of subjects, especially the development of subjects in border areas and poor communes. There are still a number of people, businesses and organizations that have not regularly accessed information on policies and laws on social insurance. The main reason is that the force of propagandists and reporters on social insurance is still small, propaganda skills are not specialized, on the other hand, changing from awareness to behavior through propaganda work also requires a certain amount of time. There are no separate propaganda topics and priority access to potential labor groups such as people working under labor contracts from full-time.

1 to less than 3 months, or potential subjects but not yet subject to compulsory social insurance participation.

Eighth, the work of improving the professional skills of staff has been positively transformed, however, some staff are still not responsible in learning and improving their professional skills, especially those who are about to retire. Others take advantage of their public duties and authority to carry out acts for their own benefit, especially in the work of medical assessment for social insurance, causing serious impacts.

2.3.3. Causes of existence and limitations

Compulsory social insurance is a type of compulsory social insurance that employees must participate in to enjoy the regime according to regulations. The subjects participating in compulsory social insurance are very broad and are currently extended to foreign workers. However, the work of developing subjects participating in compulsory social insurance is still facing many difficulties. Vietnam is considered a country with a fairly high number of people participating in compulsory social insurance, but compared to the actual labor force, it is still quite low. From the above situation, it can be seen that some basic factors have led to the ineffective implementation of compulsory social insurance due to the following reasons:

Firstly , in the past, the propaganda, mobilization and implementation of policies and benefits of social insurance have not been widely and synchronously implemented, so most employees and people have not fully understood the content, meaning and importance of compulsory social insurance policies as well as the registration process and procedures when participating in this type of social insurance, so many employees have agreed with the company to receive money directly instead of paying insurance.

Second , the current mandatory social insurance stipulates that the minimum period of social insurance contribution to receive a pension of 20 years is quite long, making it impossible for a number of employees to accumulate enough to qualify for a pension, while the conditions for receiving one-time social insurance are widely stipulated, leading to an increase in the number of people receiving one-time benefits, reducing coverage.

Social insurance

Third , policy development is still limited, the ability to analyze and forecast policies is still inadequate, the survey and assessment of implementation sometimes does not reflect reality correctly, lacks consistency, so it is not possible to predict the impacts from reality that may occur, causing negative public opinion in society.

Fourth , there are still some cases of abuse for profit, causing loss of funds, especially in the assessment of labor skills decline. Administrative reform, change in service style, and quality of public services have created favorable conditions for organizations and individuals to access social insurance, but have not yet met practical requirements.

Fifth , the deployment of information technology applications is being promoted but the database nationwide is not yet connected, causing difficulties in managing participants and beneficiaries of social insurance, affecting administrative procedure reform, minimizing inconvenience for employees and employers in participating and receiving social insurance. The reason is that there is no synchronization in the technology infrastructure system, specialized software system, and coordination between levels and sectors is not tight.

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2 of the thesis focused on studying the provisions of the 2014 Social Insurance Law on compulsory social insurance and the actual implementation of those provisions in practice with the following contents: Participants, contribution levels to form the fund, conditions for benefits, benefit levels, benefit periods, one-time social insurance. The study of current regulations was compared with previous regulations to provide analysis and assessment of the current status of regulations on compulsory social insurance. It can be seen that Chapter 2 is a relatively complete summary of current regulations on social insurance according to the 2014 Social Insurance Law with specific data to see new advances in the work of collecting and developing participants, resolving and paying compulsory social insurance, balancing pension funds and problems in policy regulations. Chapter 2 clearly stated the results achieved in the implementation of compulsory social insurance with specific data such as the number of social insurance participants and the amount of pension fund revenue is increasing, the number of people receiving salary from the social insurance fund is increasing, the pension fund has surplus for investment and growth, the situation of arrears and evasion of social insurance payment is limited.

Based on the study of current regulations, Chapter 2 also provides the most general comments on the achievements, shortcomings and limitations and their causes from legal policies and practices such as adjusting the pension calculation formula for female workers not following the same roadmap as for male workers, current regulations on retirement age in the trend of population aging have an impact on ensuring pension fund balance, conditions for receiving one-time social insurance are still too broad or the assessment work in the decline of working capacity still has issues that need attention...

Chapter 3

SOME RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE THE LAW AND IMPROVE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE LAW IMPLEMENTATION ON COMPULSORY RETIREMENT SOCIAL INSURANCE IN VIETNAM

3.1. Some recommendations to improve legal regulations on compulsory social insurance and retirement

The promulgation of the Social Insurance Law 2014 has overcome most of the shortcomings and limitations of the Social Insurance Law 2006 on social insurance. Although the Social Insurance Law 2014 has only been implemented for a short time from January 1, 2016 to present, in addition to the achievements, the law on social insurance has also revealed some shortcomings related to retirement age, development of compulsory social insurance fund... The implementation of social insurance policy in general and compulsory social insurance in particular is not thorough and strict. Therefore, in the coming time, it is necessary to amend and supplement unreasonable regulations to suit the actual situation of the country so that social insurance in general and compulsory social insurance in particular can develop more comprehensively. Through the research process, I propose a few recommendations to improve the law on compulsory social insurance as follows:

3.1.1. Develop regulations to limit the number of workers who want to receive early retirement benefits

As analyzed, the current pension policy design of Vietnam is not balanced according to the contribution-benefit principle because in reality, the number of people retiring before the age is still high, which is also the main reason for the decrease in the average retirement age of employees. With such a situation, if the number of people retiring early is not limited while the average life expectancy of the people increases, the average retirement age of employees is still low, which means the time to enjoy

Long-term pensions have a huge impact on pension funds.

Therefore, there should be a policy to increase the pension deduction rate to limit the number of employees who want to receive early retirement benefits. It is possible to follow the ILO's recommendation to reduce the deduction rate to 5% - 6% for each year of early retirement. Although this rate is high, in the long term it will limit some negative cases in the process of early retirement procedures.

Regarding the criteria for early retirement, it is necessary to closely monitor the implementation. The criteria for early retirement that have been set out must be implemented seriously and strictly, especially the regulations on certification of reduced working capacity. If an employee requests to consider early retirement due to reduced working capacity, it is necessary to consider whether the employee is actually not capable of working or not in order to make an appropriate decision.

On the other hand, it is necessary to regulate more strictly the conditions for receiving and reducing benefits when receiving one-time social insurance such as: Abolishing the regulation on receiving one-time social insurance for employees participating in compulsory social insurance after one year of leaving work without having paid social insurance for 20 years. To encourage employees to continue participating in social insurance to receive pensions in other forms such as reserving to continue participating when conditions permit or switching to voluntary social insurance to receive social insurance benefits.

3.1.2. Develop regulations on the framework with specific conditions for participating in social insurance to enjoy retirement insurance in a flexible manner for the subjects.

As analyzed, currently the minimum condition for social insurance payment period to receive pension is quite long, 20 years, so a part of employees are not eligible to accumulate or have a long waiting mentality, leading to wanting to receive social insurance at one time, which means they leave the system and reduce social insurance coverage, affecting the goal of sustainable social security.

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