SCIO press conference on fiscal reform and development
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 27, 2022
ThePaper.cn:
Affected by the pandemic, some local pensions are in deficit. How does the MOF ensure pension funds are paid on time and in full? This year, a unified elderly-care insurance system for enterprise employees will be implemented nationwide. How is this progressing? Thank you.
Liu Kun:
I'd like to stress first and foremost that the pension funds for retired people can be paid on time and in full everywhere in China. Next, Vice Minister Yu Weiping will answer your questions with some more details.
Yu Weiping:
Pension funds are the money that Chinese people entrust to the government to use for their basic living. The public pays great attention to the running of pensions. Let me give you some statistics. Preliminary data shows that the cumulative balance of social security funds nationwide totaled 4.8 trillion yuan, which can cover payments for more than 14 months. The revenue into social security funds exceeds expenditures, and like Minister Liu Kun said, the payment of pensions is guaranteed to be on time and in full.
We need to properly manage and use pension funds, so as to ensure that the hundreds of millions of elderly people can be well cared for. This manifests the practice of a people-centered development philosophy within finance departments. In recent years, we have adopted a series of measures to ensure the elderly across the country receive their pensions on time and in full.
The first is to increase the central government's subsidies. Since the implementation of the unified pension fund system in 1998, the central government has been increasing subsidies to the basic pension funds for enterprise employees. In 2021, the central government arranged subsidies of more than 600 billion yuan to support local governments to ease the pressure on fund revenue and expenditure.
The second is to increase the adjustment ratio. In 2021, the central adjustment ratio of basic pension funds for enterprise employees was increased to 4.5%, and the total scale of the adjustment has reached more than 930 billion yuan. The central government focused on supporting provinces with prominent revenue and expenditure problems – so China's central and western regions, as well as provinces with old industrial bases, have benefited with more than 210 billion yuan.
The third is to transfer state-owned capital to enrich social security funds. At the central government level, a total of 1.68 trillion yuan of state-owned capital from 93 central government enterprises was transferred to the funds.
The basic pension funds for enterprise employees is coordinated, and the funds complement each other across the country, which is conducive to giving full play to the funds' scale and enhancing their support capacity. This work was officially implemented on Jan. 1 this year. At present, we are speeding up the research and formulation of relevant supporting documents, measuring the scale of fund allocation, rationally adjusting the surplus and deficit of funds between regions, strengthening the tracking and guidance for local implementation work, adjusting and improving policies and measures in a timely manner, and getting the job done earnestly. Thank you.
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