“Supplementary Budget Request to Congress: Funding for Post-Restructuring Benefits and Tuition Waivers”

According to the adjusted agenda for the 9th session, this morning, May 17, the National Assembly will adopt a resolution on adjusting and supplementing the state budget estimate for 2025.

At 10:30 am, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang, on behalf of the Prime Minister, presented a Report (supplement) on adjusting and supplementing the state budget estimate for 2025, which consists of three main parts.

The first part involves supplementing the central budget estimate for 2025 to pay for regimes and policies for officials, civil servants, public employees, and laborers during the implementation of organizational restructuring and streamlining.

The second part proposes to transfer the unallocated regular central budget estimate for 2024 to 2025 to ensure the implementation of the tuition fee exemption policy and to fulfill tasks arising from organizational restructuring.

The third part aims to balance and allocate 3% of the total state budget expenditure for 2025 to science, technology, innovation, and national digital transformation to meet the requirements of Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW of the Politburo.

After that, the Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for Economic and Financial Affairs, Phan Van Mai, presented a report evaluating the Government’s proposal. The National Assembly will then discuss this in a hall meeting before adopting the resolution through a button-pressing vote in the same morning session.

According to Conclusions 126, 127, and 130 of the Politburo and the Secretariat, the whole country is in the process of reorganizing administrative units at all levels and building a model of local government with two levels. The Government stated that localities would need an additional VND 59,000 billion to pay for the regimes of officials, civil servants, public employees, and laborers during the organizational restructuring process.

Of this amount, the local budget is estimated to contribute VND 15,000 billion, and the central budget will provide approximately VND 44,000 billion (including about VND 14,200 billion in non-regular additional funding for localities and sources of implementation similar to the mechanism for implementing salary reform).

The Government also submitted to the National Assembly for permission to use VND 15,710 billion of the remaining salary reform fund from the adjustment of the basic salary in 2024, which was transferred to 2025, to supplement the estimates for ministries, central agencies, and localities to pay for the regimes and policies for subjects as stipulated in the Government’s Decree No. 178/2024/ND-CP and Decree No. 67/2025/ND-CP.

Permission was also requested to supplement the central budget collection estimate for 2025 with VND 28,290 billion from the central budget accumulation fund for salary reform and to correspondingly supplement the central budget expenditure estimate for 2025. This additional funding will be used to pay for the regimes and policies for subjects as stipulated in the Government’s Decree No. 178/2024/ND-CP and Decree No. 67/2025/ND-CP, following the mechanism for implementing salary reform.

Regarding the need for central funding to support localities in implementing the tuition fee exemption policy (based on preliminary data from the Ministry of Education and Training, after requesting localities to ensure sources in accordance with regulations), the estimated amount is VND 10,000 billion, of which VND 4,500 billion is for the remaining four months of the 2025-2026 academic year.

Additionally, there are emerging needs for funding to implement the relocation to new headquarters, repair headquarters, information infrastructure system, etc., for ministries, central agencies, and localities after the merger (the needs of ministries, central agencies, and localities are being reviewed and consolidated).

Therefore, based on the remaining unallocated regular central budget estimate for 2024 of approximately VND 6,623 billion, the Government proposed to the National Assembly to allow the transfer of this amount to 2025 to implement the tuition fee exemption policy and fulfill tasks arising from organizational restructuring.