Translated material
Dear pensioners
How to steal a trillion. On September 27, the government must decide: what to do with the pension system. The treasury is no longer able to cover a huge deficit of the pension fund. All summer in the offices of the interested departments, passions boil: the main question is the fate of 1.9 trillion rubles lying on funded pension accounts of citizens. Until the last days, officials intended to remove them to cover the deficit. But in early August, the moods at the top suddenly changed. What is happening - found the New Times 
The split at the top
In April, the Ministry of Health and Social Development, headed by the then Minister, and now the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova, proposed changing the procedure for the formation of the Pension Fund. Now, from each salary of an employee born later than 1966, the employer transfers 16% to the FIU for the insurance part of the pension and 6% to the accumulative to non -state pension funds or to the VEB - at the request of future pensioners. The idea of the Ministry of Socialist Republics was simple: to cancel the obligatory funded part of the pension and also send 6% to the “common boiler” - to the accounts of the FIU. That is, those funds that were transferred to individual accounts of employees as an increase in a future pension were proposed to be removed for current payments to today's pensioners. And since citizens from 45 years old and younger, according to the Ministry of Finance, have already accumulated almost 1.9 trillion rubles *** at the end of the first quarter of 2012, the issue with the missing trillion will be easily resolved. The officials proposed to return, in fact, to the former Soviet distribution system, when the size of the citizen’s pension depended not on how much he was ready to postpone his old age, but on the duration of his work experience and the average amount of earnings. The heir to the Golikovsky Ministry of Social -Socials - the current Ministry of Labor and Social Protection - fully supports this approach.
Another position was held by a group of officials of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation: measures proposed by the Ministry of Labor - in fact expropriation. And it is illegal: under the current legislation, funded accounts are the property of citizens and are even transmitted by inheritance. Therefore, we must not refuse the accumulations, but, on the contrary, to activate them, because otherwise people simply will not have a chance of a worthy old age due to a demographic situation: after all, there are fewer people from year to year, and retirement has more and more.
Supporters of the first concept are the Minister of Labor and Social Protection Maxim Topilin and the Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets. In the same camp - the head of the Central Bank Sergey Ignatiev, as well as the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova. The composition of opponents of the abolition of the accumulative component of pensions is also impressive: First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Minister of Economic Development Andrei Belousov and Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov. "
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”On the whole summer, almost in the weekly regime of meetings of the working group on the development of the pension system, the Ministry of Labor stubbornly promoted their concept: otherwise, they say, they will have to raise the retirement age, and elderly citizens will not understand this. As for the law, the current Duma will correct it from the speed with which this will be necessary. And until the beginning of August, the Ministry of Labor had a clear overall in this hardware confrontation. According to information, according to information. The New Times, the representatives of the department Maxim Topilin, putting pressure on the opponents, hinted that their approach was already approved by the president, therefore, they say, we can discuss anything except the funded part of the pension - its cancellation is a foregone conclusion, and on September 27 a government meeting was already appointed, where the corresponding concept should be approved about the same! Elvira Nabiullina, who supported the Ministry of Labor, and not the Ministry of Economy, the agency - the department, which until recently, headed the Ministry of Economy.
An important circumstance: representatives of the Ministry of Labor failed to take away the entire discussion “into the sidelines” - their position became known and caused a storm of indignation in expert circles. The influential head of Sberbank German Gref made a public criticism of this position, to whose opinion, Vladimir Putin always listened to, the authors of Strategy 2020, including Sergey Guriev, Evsey Gurvich, Yevgeny Yasin, finally, four associations of professional financial market participants who sent an open letter to the president of the country with a request to “stop the liquidation of the accumulative element Pensions ".
Be that as it may, just the other day, the position of Nabiullina changed 180 degrees: having gathered at an urgent meeting of the participants in the working group, she said that the accumulative component of the pension system had already developed and can be canceled in any way. In general, it is not worth “driving horses” by September 27, and a full -fledged public discussion should be preceded by such large -scale decisions.
Politics intervened
President of the Strategic Development Center Mikhail Dmitriev, who participated in a meeting with Nabiullina and told The New Times about what was happening there, believes that the president’s assistant could not change his position publicly if the president himself did not change it. What prompted him to this? "
Someone managed to explain to the president that the political slogans of the "angry townspeople" would be added economic, and then left-handed, right, nationalists, and patriots will come out in the area in Odn
“It would seem that the economic arguments of opponents of the concept of the Ministry of Labor are more than serious. Firstly, millions of people, willy-nilly included in the process of accumulating funds for old age, will once again find themselves“ thrown ”by the state-their money will simply be confiscated.
Secondly, the abandonment of a funded pension means the actual death of the system of non-state pension funds, which today 15.4 million people have already entrusted with 0.5 trillion rubles.
Thirdly, such a sharp change in the rules for the game in the pension services market is a bad signal for investors: with the cancellation of the funded pension system, the country will lose an important financial instrument-long money, long-term investment of infrastructure projects. 
But according to Mikhail Dmitriev, it's not about the economy. Fear was the decisive factor. And it is not a fear that the law does not allow to select funds accumulated in pension accounts: the current State Duma will correct and accept what is necessary and when it is necessary, that is, in the shortest possible time. Another question is political risks. The authorities frankly scared, recalling protests against the monetization of benefits. Yes, from a hardware point of view, select the accumulated money from people and throw it to shut a hole in the pension fund is a brilliant decision. But it quite specifically beats the interests of those who are now younger than 45 (they are the right to mandatory accumulations), as well as those who make good money, understand finances and trusts their accumulations to private, and not state funds. According to Dmitriev, someone managed to explain to the president that it was this part of the population that made up the backbone of that mass protest movement that has arisen in recent months. If now we also inflict a financial blow to them by depriving the right to accumulate for a decent old age, the upcoming season of autumn protests threatens to become even larger: economic slogans of “angry townspeople” will be added, and then the left, right, and nationalists, and patriots will go out in the area in the same line. It was such risks, Dmitriev believes, and forced the authorities to press the brakes. Is it completely?
Consensus is required
The officials of the Ministry of Labor will still not abandon their concept, the head of the expert economic group Evsey Gurvich does not hide pessimism, except that the wording will be replaced: for example, instead of mandatory funded deductions, they will suggest introducing voluntary ones. Say, whoever wants, he himself accumulates for old age, and whoever does not want, he receives only the distribution part from the “common boiler”. Gurvich considers this approach a false choice: it is obvious that the vast majority will not want to or will not be able to save money for decades ahead, instead of spending it now: “It is like inviting everyone to voluntarily decide whether to pay taxes or not pay taxes: as a result of such a“ will ”the country's budget will collapse.” Accordingly, the “voluntariness” of savings, according to the expert, will mean the inevitable death of the funded system and the quick collapse of the institutions supporting it - non -state pension funds.
But Mikhail Dmitrieva recent events inspire a certain optimism: he hopes that the government will not make hasty and subcover decisions on changing the pension system, and by the end of September - the beginning of October, apparently, only a certain conceptual document will appear, which will be submitted for public discussion. In the end, pension provision issues concern absolutely all citizens of the country, and society should develop a consensus regarding how this system will function. Dmitriev, as an example, brought Poland, which recently also changed its pension system. This was preceded by more than ten years of public disputes, but in the end the compromises arranging all were found. Russian society will also find them, if, of course, it is allowed to discuss.