Public finance reform: Improving the quality of public service delivery units

The renovation of the public financial management mechanism is a breakthrough step to implement the national financial strategy, contributing to the sustainable development, ensuring social security. Photo ST.

Financial self-responsibility

The public service delivery system plays a pivotal role in providing public service and implementing social security policies, facilitating people to be easy, convenient and equal in the enjoyment of essential services with higher quality and more reasonable cost. However, the organizations and activities of the system are still weak. In particular, state budget spending for the poor households is too large, some of them are unprofitable and wasteful. Therefore, strengthening the financial self-responsibility of public service delivery units in terms of implementing tasks, organizational structure, human resources, and finance are being promoted by the Government and other departments, especially the Ministry of Finance, promoting public finance reform.

According to Mr. Pham Van Truong, Director of the Department of Finance and Public Administration of the Ministry of Finance, the implementation of the Decree No. 16/2015/NĐ-CP of the Government stipulates that the autonomy mechanism for public service delivery units is initially achieved some results. So far, the Government has issued two decrees: Decree No. 54/2016/ND-CP dated July 14, 2016, regulating the autonomy mechanism of public science and technology organizations; Decree No. 141/2016/ND-CP dated October 10, 2016, regulating the autonomy mechanism of the public service delivery units in the field of economic and non-productive career. Ministries have also submitted to the Government a Decree regulating the autonomy mechanism of the public service delivery units in the remaining five areas (health, culture, sports and tourism, vocational education, media, and press; educations).

In addition, the Prime Minister has issued seven decisions on the list of public non-business services using the state budget of ministries and central agencies. In localities, the People's Committees of provinces and cities such as Tien Giang, Son La, Hai Phong, Dong Nai and Da Nang have promulgated the list of public service delivery. At the same time, the Prime Minister has issued six decisions to plan the public service delivery network of four ministries: the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. In addition, the chairman of the People's Committee of the seven provinces has signed the decision to plan the public service delivery network of the province.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Truong Giang, Deputy Director of Department of Public Expenditure, said that the public service delivery units that were given autonomy have actively used the budget allocated by the state budget to carry out their tasks effectively in capital mobilization for professional development and expanding the development of non-business revenue sources.

“The implementation of the financial autonomy mechanism, from the results of activities, the renovation of operation methods and anti-waste, the public service delivery unit has created a source of income for the staffs of the unit. According to reports from ministries, central and local agencies, incomes of staffs in the public service delivery unit has been gradually improved, the average income of officials and civil servants is about 0.5-1.5 times higher than the salary level of the unit,” said Nguyen Truong Giang shared.

Join forces

The Resolutions of the 6th Plenum of the 12th Party Central Committee on continuing the renovation of the organizational and management system, improvement of the quality and effectiveness of the activities of the public service delivery units (Resolution No. 19-NQ/TU) was approved by the Politburo for the purpose of fundamentally, comprehensively reforming the public service delivery system, ensuring a lean and reasonable structure. At the same time, reducing sharply the proportion, improving the efficiency of state budget expenditure for public service delivery unit to restructure the State budget, reform salary and income for cadres and civil servants in public service delivery units.

According to Mr. Pham Van Truong, in order to effectively implement the requirements of public finance reform, besides the determination of the Government and the Prime Minister, the initiative of the Ministry of Finance is very necessary. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has issued a number of measures to improve the awareness of the society. The necessity and urgency of the reform of the working mechanism of the public service delivery units, aiming to provide better services to all people and ensuring that social policy beneficiaries and the poor continue to access essential basic services with higher quality.

“With this determination and the active participation of the entire political system, the mechanism of operation, the renovation of the public financial management mechanism is a breakthrough step to implement the national financial strategy, contributing to the sustainable development, ensuring the social security of the country in the coming time,” said Pham Van Truong.

According to the representative of the Ministry of Finance, the implementation of this guideline needs to achieve a number of objectives, including the completion of the legal framework, the fundamental reform of the budget management according to the performance results; granting total autonomy to budget-using units in parallel with responsibility for quantity, quality and time of implementation; ensuring that the roadmap for calculating the public-service charges is fully calculated; promoting the mechanism of bidding, orders, assigning tasks; creating a healthy and equal competitive environment in order to attract non-state resources; raising the efficiency of the state budget expenditure management. Only when being decisive in the implementation of synchronous and strong solutions, the implementation of public finance reform has achieved the target.