Securing financial sources for anti-pandemic

The budget has been prioritized to arrange for Covid-19 infection prevention and control, ensuring people's lives.

The budget has spent VND 21.5 trillion on pandemic prevention

According to the Ministry of Finance, State budget expenditure has been strictly managed and been thoroughly thrifty, with both central budgets and local budgets prioritised to arrange for the prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring people's lives, funding for the purchase, import and use of vaccines from the central and local budgets as well as mobilisation, contribution and sponsorship.

For the whole year of 2020 and the first six months of 2021, the State budget has spent VND 21.5 trillion (including VND 16.8 trillion in 2020) on pandemic prevention. Specifically, spending VND 8.4 trillion to buy vaccines, supplies, biological products, and medical equipment and spending on supporting competent forces involved in pandemic prevention (officials, medical staff, army and police forces, etc.), and supporting people in quarantine (VND 4 trillion in 2020 and VND 4.4 trillion in 2021). Besides that, the Prime Minister decided to add VND 7.65 trillion to the Ministry of Health to buy 31 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine and 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine of VNVC, of which VND 5.1 trillion from the savings of central budget expenditure in 2020 and VND 2.55 billion from the mobilisation of the Covid-19 Vaccine Fund.

Regarding supporting people facing difficulties due to the pandemic, based on expected funding needs to implement policies, the Government has submitted to the National Assembly Standing Committee to spend VND 20 trillion from the revenue increase and saving of the central budget in 2019 to support people facing difficulties due to Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, it has issued Resolutions No. 42/2020/NQ-CP and Resolution No. 154/2020/ND-CP on solutions to support people facing difficulties due to Covid-19 pandemic. Accumulated to the end of June 2021, the total State budget that has been spent is VND 13.1 trillion, for about 13.2 million people (including VND 12.83 trillion in 2020 and VND 280 billion in 2021).

According to economist Le Dang Doanh, the Government and the Ministry of Finance have made great efforts to ensure financial resources for the import of vaccines and procurement of medical equipment for the prevention and control of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in the context of limited budget resources, the Government has established a Covid-19 Vaccine Fund to mobilise domestic and foreign contributions, which has created a significant financial resource.

“Compared to low-income countries, Vietnam had made respectable efforts in pandemic prevention, ensuring financial resources for anti-pandemic work. With the current outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam would have to make greater effort to be able to prevent the pandemic, so besides ensuring resources from the budget, mobilising resources in the society were very necessary, thereby contributing to quickly controlling the pandemic," expert Doan said. Regarding the Covid-19 Vaccine Fund, as of 5:00 PM on July 12, 2021, the mobilised amount is VND 8,082 billion.

Balance resources to buy vaccines and anti-pandemic activities

To ensure financial resources for pandemic prevention and control, from now until the end of the year, the Ministry of Finance said it will actively balance and ensure adequate State budget resources, mobilise sources form sonsorship and voluntary contributions from the businesses community, people at home and from abroad to buy vaccines and serve for Covid-19 infection prevention activities following the resolutions of the Party, the Government and the directives of the Prime Minister. Along with that, continue to save recurrent expenses, cut expenses that are not really necessary, ostentatious activities and formalities. At the same time, recovering regular funds that have been assigned to ministries, central and local authorities but have not been allocated by June 30or have been allocated but have not been implemented yet, and other recurrent expenses that are not really necessary to supplement reserve sources of the central and local budgets for Convid-19 infection prevention and control and for the vaccine strategy.

The Ministry of Finance issued Document No. 6299/BTC-NSNN dated June 11, 2021 guiding ministries, central authorities and localities to reduce recurrent expenditures and saving in 2021 under the Government's Resolution No. 58/NQ-CP. Up to now, through summary of reports on the implementation of reduction and saving of recurrent expenditures from the State budget in 2021, ministries, central authorities and localities, it is expected the reduction and saving of recurrent expenditures will be about VND 11-12 trillion, of which the central budget is about VND 7 trillion and the local budget is about VND 4-5 trillion.

Noting the Ministry of Finance's efforts to save from recurrent expenditure to have more financial resources for pandemic prevention, Doanh suggested that financial spending should be made more public and transparent to make recurrent expenditures more transparent and more economical, thereby ensuring additional financial resources for Covid-19 infection prevention and control. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to ensuring financial resources for preventive health work, not just medical treatment. Consultation with medical experts on disease prevention will help to control the disease from the beginning, saving financial resources.