Vietnam : Developing a Modern Pension System--Current Challenges and Options for Future Reform

Abstract

With declining fertility and rising life expectancy, the Vietnamese population is expected to age rapidly, making the development of a modern social security system a pressing priority for Vietnam. The current system faces a number of major challenges, including low coverage rates in both the formal and informal sectors, inequities between different participant groups, lack of financial sustainability, and weak capacity for management and implementation of social insurance programs. Reforms are needed urgently to expand coverage, promote fairness, improve financial sustainability, and modernize the social security administration in order to help ensure income security for Vietnam's aging population in the coming decades. This note aims to contribute to the policy discussions around possible revisions to the social insurance code foreseen for 2013 by reviewing some of these challenges and possible reform options.