The Ministry of Health is drafting a Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 20/2021/ND-CP dated March 15, 2021 of the Government stipulating social assistance policies for social protection beneficiaries, amended and supplemented by Decree No. 76/2024/ND-CP dated July 1, 2024.
According to the Ministry of Health, currently, the standard level of social assistance is still very low, not ensuring the minimum living standard and lacking similarity with social insurance policies, poverty reduction or preferential treatment for people with meritorious services.
The standard of 500,000 VND/month is currently only equivalent to 22.7% of the rural poverty standard and 17.8% of the urban poverty standard according to new regulations (Decree No. 351/2025/ND-CP stipulates that the rural poverty standard is 2,200,000 VND/month, and the urban area is 2,800,000 VND/month).
In the context of the consumer price index CPI in the 2024-2026 period increasing by an average of over 3.5%/year (expected to increase by nearly 12% after 3 years), especially the group of fast-growing food items, maintaining the same level of social allowances and social pension allowances is making the lives of policy beneficiaries increasingly difficult.
In addition, the current policy system still has a large gap in norms for living expenses, care, and nurturing of social protection beneficiaries. There are no synchronous regulations on detailed living expense norms (including: clothing, personal belongings, health care, study, rehabilitation and entertainment) as well as lacking norms for infrastructure investment, repair and procurement of specialized equipment for social assistance facilities to serve care, treatment, and rehabilitation for social protection beneficiaries.
The lack of these legal bases leads to inconsistent budget allocation between localities and grassroots levels, directly causing difficulties for budget preparation and finalization. The addition of these norms is an urgent requirement to standardize minimum care conditions, improve the quality of rehabilitation and support social protection beneficiaries to integrate into the community....
Therefore, to promptly meet the urgent requirements of social security without interrupting the implementation of current policies, the promulgation of Decrees amending and supplementing inadequate contents in Decrees No. 20/2021/ND-CP, Decree No. 76/2024/ND-CP and Decree No. 176/2025/ND-CP is extremely necessary.
Focusing on amending and supplementing these inadequate contents will help soon complete the legal corridor, remove difficulties for localities in application and implementation, ensure unity, synchronization and improve the effectiveness of implementing social assistance policies in the new situation.
Proposal to raise social assistance standards, social pension allowance levels
According to the Ministry of Health, currently, the standard social allowance and social pension allowance of 500,000 VND/month is the lowest level in the social security system. If only adjusted to increase by 8% (to 540,000 VND/month), this allowance level still does not reach 25% of the rural poverty standard and less than 20% of the urban poverty standard.
To ensure the implementation of the roadmap to increase the standard level of social assistance and social pension benefits in relation to other social policies, fairness between groups of people in particularly difficult circumstances, not to miss out on subjects; no one is left behind, in the draft Decree, the Ministry of Health proposes to raise the standard level of social assistance and social pension benefits from 500,000 VND/month to 600,000 VND/month (an increase of 20%).
Depending on the balanced capacity of the budget, the rate of consumer price increase and the living situation of social protection beneficiaries, competent authorities consider and adjust to increase the standard level of social assistance to be appropriate; ensure policy correlation with other beneficiaries.
The standard of 600,000 VND/month helps the rate of meeting poverty standards increase significantly (reaching 27.3% of rural poverty standards and 21.4% of urban poverty standards). This plan concretizes the spirit of the Constitution on the right to social security, helping subjects to be able to afford essential needs, contributing to narrowing the gap between social security policy groups.
