Russia’s finance minister says it’s time to raise the pension age and restore the market-based savings program
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov says Russia urgently needs to raise its retirement age, as well as cease pensions for early retirement. “Doing so would not only reduce the burden on the budget, but most importantly it would defuse the consequences of the demographic situation we’ll face in the near future,” he explained.
Siluanov also stressed the need to preserve and continue developing the pension system’s market-based savings program. “Given the sanctions [against Russia by the West, and against the West by Russia], we need to develop our own domestic investors,” he argued. Siluanov says these private savings accounts should be reinstated in Russia’s pension system in 2016.
“We urgently need address the issue of abolishing early retirement and raising the pension age,” Siluanov said.
- Anton Siluanov, Russia’s finance minister since 2011, has repeatedly stressed the need the raise the retirement age. Each time, other officials have denied that the federal government has any plans to raise the pension age in the near future.
- In early 2015, Siluanov announced that the Finance Ministry had drafted a plan to raise the pension age to 63 for both men and women. The change would be implemented gradually over the course of several years, Siluanov said.
- In 2014, Russia froze its pension system’s market-based savings program, which allowed citizens to invest 6 percent of their income-tax payments in the economy, giving individuals the chance to manage their own money (investing it in private parties vetted by the government or in the state development bank, Vnesheconombank).
- In late 2014 and early 2015, the media reported that the government is considering extending the freeze on pension savings accounts, or possibly abandoning the program altogether.