One million people have lost jobs while 17 million others saw lower incomes due to the Covid-19 pandemic according to a report by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.
The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs conducted the report in order to review the implementation results of the National Assembly’s resolutions on socio-economic in 2020 and prepare for the upcoming NA meeting session. The report was then submitted to the NA Economic Committee.
Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung said the number of people in the workforce dropped to a record low. They face huge pressure when dealing with inflation and unemployment. In the first eight months of 2020, over one million people lost their jobs.
Statistics from the General Statistics Office show that Covid-19 badly affected 30.8 million people age over 15. About 17.6 million people had their incomes slashed. The service sector is the hardest hit with 72% of the employees in the sector affected. The industry and construction sector followed with 67.85% of the sector employees affected. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector has 25.15% employees affected. The average monthly income in the second quarter dropped by VND950,000 (USD40) to VND6.45m compared to the first quarter.
Vietnam still has 1.3 million poor households and 1.23 near-poor households. Dung said the number of both poor and near-poor households will increase because of Covid-19.
The unemployment rate in urban areas is 4.39%, higher than the sub-4% goal set by the NA. However, it is still considered a positive result, especially when the GDP growth rate was 2%.
When the VND62trn (USD2.6bn) support package was issued, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs had collaborated with related agencies and localities authorities to provide timely support to people in needs. As of September 15, over 16 million people have been approved for VND17.5trn of support.
Vietnam State Treasury reported that they had disbursed VND12.5trn (USD536m) to support over 12.5 million people and 23,500 businesses. Of which VND783bn were given to workers and VND24bn to businesses.
There are many opinions saying that the effectiveness of the VND62bn package should be reconsidered since only 30% of the package has been disbursed. However, the majority agreed to launch another package for 2021 to support suffering businesses.
Nguyen Thi Hong, deputy governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, confirmed that there will be another support package. She said that there would be enough money to allocate to credit facilities. They would also review the potential risk of bad debt and adjust interest rates flexibly.
This article was originally published in Dtinews
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Source: Vietnam Insider