Politburo members and the Prime Minister have just issued Directive No. 26/CT-TTg on building socio-economic development plans and state budget estimates for 2027. Notably, the Directive requires to continue restructuring state budget expenditures to reduce the proportion of recurrent expenditures, increase the proportion of development investment expenditures; prioritize resources to implement breakthrough goals, important political tasks decided by the Party and State, national target programs, social security and defense policies.
Allocate resources appropriate to the state budget balance capacity to implement salary adjustments in the public sector, pension adjustments (part of the state budget guaranteed), preferential policies for people with meritorious services, and social protection.
Resolution 27/2018 of the Central Government sets the goal of applying the new salary regime from 2021, but the roadmap must be adjusted due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Assembly then decided to pay salaries according to job positions from July 1, 2024, but the implementation process is still hindered, so it is not possible to completely abolish the basic salary and coefficient. Therefore, currently, the contingent of cadres, civil servants, and public sector employees still receive salaries according to the basic salary.
The Government has adjusted the base salary from 1.8 to 2.34 million VND/month from July 1, 2024. From July 1, 2026, this level continued to increase to 2.53 million VND/month, leading to corresponding adjustments in pensions and allowances.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngo Tri Long - Economic expert, Vietnam Financial Consultants Association - stated the reality that the workload, responsibility requirements and management pressure at the grassroots level are increasing when implementing the 2-level local government model. Meanwhile, the income of many officials is much lower than in the private sector.
Therefore, if salaries are not paid according to the job position, the problem will not be fundamentally solved. A synchronous and substantive salary reform roadmap is needed, more suitable to the new management model and the requirement to improve the quality of the staff.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngo Tri Long said that along with salary increases, the State must simultaneously reform institutions, improve job positions and innovate the evaluation mechanism to ensure that salary policies properly promote their role. Salaries need to be linked to productivity and work results, switching to paying salaries combining position and task performance efficiency. Each civil servant must have clear output targets, in which the income part linked to results can account for about 20%-30% of total income to create motivation to work.
Referring to the reflection of commune-level officials, civil servants, and public employees on the workload increasing 2-3 times when implementing the 2-level local government model, National Assembly delegate Duong Van Phuoc (Da Nang Delegation) analyzed that the regime and preferential policies have not changed, are not commensurate, causing income not to be strong enough to create motivation, affecting the psychology, peace of mind in work and the ability to attract and retain officials at the grassroots level.
The delegate proposed that the Ministry of Home Affairs develop job positions and minimum payroll frameworks as a basis for determining appropriate payroll for commune levels. At the same time, advise the Government to issue a salary mechanism and specific preferential policies, sufficient to encourage commune-level officials and civil servants to feel secure in their work.
Sharing the same view, National Assembly Deputy Siu Huong (Gia Lai Delegation) proposed that, in the long term, considering the actual conditions of the commune level today, it is necessary to consider adjusting the regime of salary reform policies to be commensurate with the job positions of commune-level cadres, civil servants, and public employees.
The issue is not only whether the salary will increase or not, but whether that increase is enough for people receiving budget salaries to live on their salaries or not. Because no matter how flexible the organizational structure is adjusted, if the salary policy does not keep up, the pressure of "inflowing and outflowing" the public sector will still continue.
