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The VND 62,000 billion support package has supported nearly 16 million people of beneficiary groups with a total budget of more thanVND 17.5 trillion. Photo: Internet.

After discussing and consulting the comments of ministries and branches, the Ministry Labour of Invalids and Social Affairs proposed the Government and the Prime Minister to amend Resolution No.42/NQ-CP.

Accordingly, proposing to expand support package for employees who postpones labour contracts, unpaid leave at private educational institutions, public educational institutions to ensure recurrent spending in preschool, primary school, junior high schooland high school levels.

The time limitforsupport according to the actual time of postponing the performance of labour contracts, unpaid leave, monthly support, depending on the actual development of pandemic, is from February 1and not more than threemonths (previously calculated starting from April 1).

According to the plan, the support package is about 62,000 billion VND for 20 million beneficiaries. Of these, cash support from the State budget is about VND 30,000 billion, the rest is indirect support by conditional loans like aVND 16,000 billion package forsalary payment and VND 6,000 billion for training. However, so far, only one enterprise has availed ofthe support package of VND 16,000 billion

One of the reasonsis that some of the conditions to be entitled to this support package are too difficult for businesses. To solve this problem, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs has proposed to abolish the condition that "At least 50% of the stoppage salary has been paid for the labour in advance according to Clause 3, Article 98 of the Labour Code".

The criterion on supporting period forstoppage workers from April to June is amended into fromApril to December to continue to support the employer by the end of 2020 by using loans from the Bank for Social Policies. However, the loan support period is still not more than threemonths.

In addition, the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs also proposed amending the condition from "Enterprises face financial difficulties, cannot afford to pay stoppage wages for workers and have used up the salary provision fund to pay salaries ofstoppageworkers"into" Employers whose revenue in the first quarter of 2020 decreased by 20% or more compared to the fourth quarter of 2019 or revenue of the priorquarter before the time of consideration for support decreased by 20% or more compared to the same period in 2019”to concretise the criteria for approving the application for businesses to access loans from the Social Policy Bank.

Regarding postponement of payment to the death and pension fund, the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs proposed cutting 50% of employees participating in social insurance or more compared to when the competent agency announced the pandemic, to 20%. With this plan, it is expected that about 70% of businesses will be eligible. It is assumed that between 30% and 50% of enterprises temporarily stop contributing to the pension and death fund, equivalent to about 120,000 to 200,000 enterprises with between 3.2 million and 5.4 million employees suspending contributions, the amount of one month will fallfrom VND 3,969 to VND 6,618 billion.