Revise regulations on administrative management funding for state agencies

The retained revenue source is also in the scope of determining the budget for autonomy implementation. Photo: Internet.

Many points are not feasible

In the recently published proposal of the Ministry of Finance, the most notable content is the provision of administrative management funding for autonomy implementation, particularly the drafting agency proposed to review the contents provisions on the administrative management funding allocated.

Regarding this content, according to current regulations, the scope of funding for autonomy implementation includes: Salary fund according to the number of staff members assigned by the competent authority; expenses for regular activities, procurement of assets, equipment and facilities, regular repair of fixed assets; regular professional expenditures, which at the time of allocation and assignment of annual state budget estimates, according to regulations, have detailed cost estimates based on work volumes and prescribed standards and norms.

For communes, wards and townships: People's Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities shall base themselves on the method of determining the assigned funds to implement the autonomy regime.

In fact, the determination of the allocation of funds to implement the autonomy regime for the regular specific operational expenditures that at the time of allocation annual state budget estimates according to the prescribed estimate details by workload and standards, regulations and norms are not really feasible in reality, because when assigning estimates, very few agencies specify the details of workload and standards, norms for eligibility for autonomy funding allocation. There are also different arguments on which professional competences are specific, and which ones are not specific; the determination of autonomy allocated funds between central and local agencies is also different, leading to the determination of regular operating expenses for regular activities to determine actual funding. Currently, autonomy has not been agreed.

In addition to stipulating the allocation of funds for the implementation of autonomy in Decree 130 and Decree No. 117, a number of other legal documents regulating the funding for implementation of autonomy, leading to a disagreement about the content of funding for implementation of autonomy. For example, Government Decree No. 120/2016 / ND-CP of August 23, 2016 detailing and guiding the implementation of a number of articles of the Law on Fees and charges stipulates the sources of collected charges left for spending of autonomous and non-autonomous content of state agencies. The stipulation of the scope of funding sources for the autonomy regime, including the retained charge sources according to regulations, has created favorable conditions for agencies to actively use the retained revenue sources, the agencies have the retained fee sources, they will be able to implement the autonomy mechanism, and increase incomes for officials and public employees. However, this has led to some inadequacies in implementation, such as ministries and sectors that have retained revenue sources and are still allocated funds to implement autonomy from the state budget according to the assigned payroll, as well as being difficult to isolate what spending is from the retained revenue and what is from the state budget, because in practice it is difficult to separate the collection task from other tasks in the same agency.

Moreover, a number of legal documents related to autonomy regulations for state agencies have been amended, supplemented or are being reviewed and amended, such as: the Government has issued Decree No. 34/2019 / ND-CP of April 24, 2019 amending and supplementing a number of regulations on communal cadres and civil servants and part-time officials at commune, village and population groups, abolish the determination of allotted funding for commune level. At present, the Ministry of Finance is submitting to the Government a Decree amending and supplementing Decree No. 120, which reviews the regulations on the collection of retained fees for state agencies in the direction of fees from service activities performed by state agencies, the fees must be remitted into the state budget, and the charges for provision of collection services shall be guaranteed by the state budget.

Meet the requirements of salary reform

Another issue related to the budget for administrative management for autonomy implementation raised by the Ministry of Finance is the requirement to concretize the Party and State's views and policies on continuing to implement the mechanism of contracting administrative expenses associated with the bonus regime to encourage people to work well and effectively.

In particular, Resolution No. 39-NQ / TW of the Central Executive Committee on staff downsizing and restructuring of the contingent of cadres, civil servants and public employees has set out a policy to continue implementing the business contract mechanism of administrative management fee attached to the bonus regime to encourage people to work well and effectively. Resolution No. 27-NQ / TW of the Seventh Conference of the Central Executive Committee of the 12th term on salary policy reform for cadres, civil servants, officials, armed forces and employees in enterprises proposed the new salary structure design contents, such as: basic salary (accounting for about 70% of the total salary fund) and allowances (accounting for about 30% of the total salary fund); additional bonuses (bonus funds equal to about 10% of the total salary fund of the year, excluding allowances).

At the same time, the heads of agencies, organizations and units are entitled to use the annual salary and expenditure fund allocated annually to hire experts, scientists and talented people to perform the tasks of agencies, organizations, units and decide the level of income payment commensurate with the assigned tasks. The heads of agencies, organizations and units formulate regulations to regularly reward those under their management, in association with the results of evaluation and classification of work completion by each person.

Thus, in order to ensure consistency in the principle of allocating funding for autonomy, as well as perfecting the legal basis for the allocation of autonomy funding for local state agencies, the draft decree needs to review regulations on funding for the implementation of autonomy for state agencies under the central and local management.

Based on the practical situation to determine funding for autonomy in the period of 2014-2018, based on Resolution No. 27-NQ / TW of May 21, 2018, the Ministry of Finance proposes to supplement the scope of contracting including bonuses funds according to Resolution No. 27-NQ / TW, and also revoked regulations on autonomy for specific professional spending activities to be suitable with the actual situation and agreed on the principle of autonomy funding allocation among agencies; abolish the regulation on autonomy from the collected fee source as prescribed. Accordingly, the scope of administrative expenses assigned by the autonomy includes salary fund (including contributions according to the prescribed regime), annual recurrent expenditure and bonus fund according to Resolution 27.