Flexible sources for salary reform, continue to review land revenue

According to the National Assembly's decision, the Government is proactively using the accumulated salary reform fund to pay for salary and income policies and regimes. The National Assembly also decided to set aside 15,000 billion VND in reserves to ensure national financial safety and security in case of socio-economic fluctuations and state budget revenue does not meet the estimate.

The National Assembly passed a Resolution on the state budget estimate for 2026. (Photo: Investment Newspaper)

Allowing the use of more than 23,800 billion VND to pay basic salary in 2026

Along with the Socio- Economic Development Plan, resolutions on budget estimates and allocation for 2026 were also approved by the National Assembly last week.

These contents were discussed by National Assembly delegates in groups and in the hall, with many delegates suggesting an early salary increase from the beginning of 2026, instead of July 1, 2026, to share the difficulties with civil servants and public employees after merging administrative units with a much larger workload, and more difficult travel and accommodation conditions.

The current basic salary is 2.34 million VND/month, effective from July 1, 2024, after increasing from 1.8 million VND. The salary adjustment will affect more than 3 million people receiving salaries from the budget.

Responding to delegates' opinions, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said that he will increase revenue and save expenditure to present a plan to increase salaries early in 2026.

Through the Resolution on the 2026 state budget estimate, the National Assembly allows the use of 23,839 billion VND of the local budget's salary reform fund until the end of 2025, with the remaining balance transferred to the local budget for 2026 to implement the basic salary level of 2.34 million VND/month.

Regarding the management of the state budget in 2025, the National Assembly requested the Government to direct the review of the use of central budget funds assigned to ministries, central and local agencies to implement policies and regimes for cadres, civil servants, public employees, workers and armed forces in the implementation of the organizational arrangement of the political system, and by the end of 2025, if not fully used, to recover and return the accumulated salary reform funds of the central budget.

In 2026, the deficit will be about 605,800 billion VND.

According to the Resolution on the state budget estimate for 2026, the total budget revenue in 2026 is more than 2.5 million billion VND, of which the central budget is 1.22 million billion VND and 1.3 million billion VND from localities.

Total budget expenditure is estimated at 3.15 million billion VND. The deficit is about 605,800 billion VND, equivalent to 4.2% of GDP.

Ministries, central and local agencies continue to implement solutions to create sources for salary policy reform according to regulations. In 2026, continue to exclude a number of revenue items when calculating the increase in local budget revenue compared to the estimate for salary policy reform, including: one-time land rent collected in advance by investors for compensation, support and resettlement; revenue from handling public assets at agencies, organizations and units decided by competent authorities to be used for investment expenditure according to regulations; revenue from protection and development of rice-growing land; fees for visiting relic sites and world heritage sites; fees for using infrastructure works, service works and public utilities in border gate areas; environmental protection fees for wastewater; revenue from public land funds, revenue from profits and public assets at communes and revenue from renting and selling state-owned houses.

Allow the expansion of the scope of using the central budget's salary reform accumulation fund to adjust pensions, social insurance benefits, monthly allowances, preferential allowances for meritorious people and streamline the payroll; allow the use of local budget's salary reform fund to implement social security policies issued by the Central Government and streamline the payroll.

The National Assembly assigned the Government to review the budget for savings in regular operating support expenses (salary and operating expenses as prescribed by law) due to streamlining the payroll and reorganizing the apparatus to implement the 2-level local government model; allowing localities to use this savings to supplement the local budget's salary reform resources.

From 2026, the Government will proactively use accumulated resources for salary reform to ensure the implementation of salary, allowance and income regimes according to regulations.

Reserves to ensure financial security and safety

Through the Resolution on central budget allocation in 2026, the National Assembly decided to set aside 15,000 billion VND as a reserve to ensure national financial safety and security in case of socio-economic fluctuations and state budget revenue does not meet the estimate.

During the discussion, there were opinions from delegates suggesting that this regulation be considered. Signing the Government's explanatory report before the National Assembly pressed the button, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang said that the state budget balance plan was built on the basis of double-digit growth, and all financial and state budget indicators were expected to increase significantly compared to the previous period (budget revenue increased 1.7 times; budget expenditure increased 1.9 times, of which development investment expenditure increased 3 times; budget mobilization needs increased 2.5 times compared to the previous period...).

"This is a huge challenge if economic growth and state budget revenue do not meet the plan due to external objective reasons, which will strongly impact the balance of resources for spending tasks," the Government said.

Therefore, the Government affirmed that it is necessary to propose a contingency solution to ensure financial security and safety. This proposal has been agreed upon by the Politburo and the Central Committee. On that basis, in the central budget allocation plan for 2026, the National Assembly will set aside 15,000 billion VND in contingency to ensure national financial security and safety in case of socio-economic fluctuations and budget revenue does not meet the estimate, and the Government will be assigned to proactively manage to limit the impact on the estimated spending tasks and ensure financial security.

In case the state budget revenue reaches and exceeds the plan, the allocation and use shall comply with the provisions of the State Budget Law.

In addition to the above content, some delegates proposed to review land revenue, which currently accounts for a fairly high proportion of total domestic revenue. The response from the Minister of Finance is that, in the 2021-2025 period, land revenue exceeded the plan by a large margin (reaching about 1.2 million billion VND, compared to the plan of 700,000 billion VND) and accounted for a high proportion (about 15.5%) of total domestic revenue, mainly due to the positive impact of the hot real estate market, the promotion of transport infrastructure (expressways, national highways...) and the determination of localities in removing difficulties and implementing projects. This is an important resource for localities to implement investment projects, promoting socio-economic growth in the locality, as well as the whole country.

In the coming time, the Government will continue to review revenue sources, use land revenue reasonably and effectively, as well as promote other revenue sources, especially revenue from production and business activities of the economy, to ensure a more sustainable revenue structure, the Minister informed.

The explanatory report also responded to delegates' opinions on revenue from equitization and divestment of state capital. The Government said that in the 2021-2025 period, this revenue source only reached about 16% of the plan, due to a number of reasons, such as the need to carefully evaluate to choose the equitization and divestment plan of state capital in enterprises to ensure the highest interests of the State, not sell capital at all costs, avoid sell-offs, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and unfavorable impacts from the world and regional situation... Some subjective reasons such as the time for approval of the list is slow, the list and the implementation rate of the first approval are not suitable to the actual situation, must be supplemented and adjusted many times...

“For the 2026-2030 period, the Government is urgently completing and submitting to the Politburo for consideration and decision the State Economic Development Project, with specific solutions to develop this economic sector to meet the country's development requirements in the new era,” said the Minister of Finance.

Prioritize capital allocation for science, technology and innovation projects

While there is no medium-term public investment plan for the period 2026 - 2030, the National Assembly requests to prioritize capital allocation for tasks and projects with complete investment procedures as of December 31, 2025 in the following cases: tasks and projects that have been assigned by competent authorities with medium-term public investment plans for the period 2021 - 2025 or have capital allocated from the state budget outside the medium-term public investment plan for the period 2021 - 2025, need to continue implementation, transition to the period 2026 - 2030; investment preparation tasks, planning tasks. Prioritize capital allocation for important tasks, projects, and works for the 2026-2030 period, with a vision to 2045 in the Document submitted to the 14th National Congress of the Party, and tasks and projects on science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation to implement Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW of the Politburo.

According to Investment Newspaper

https://baodautu.vn/linh-hoat-nguon-cai-cach-tien-luong-tiep-tuc-ra-soat-khoan-thu-tu-dat-d435556.html

Source: https://thoidai.com.vn/linh-hoat-nguon-cai-cach-tien-luong-tiep-tuc-ra-soat-khoan-thu-tu-dat-217745.html