Belyakov's case

On August 5, the government extended the freeze on pension savings until 2015. A government official who publicly apologized was fired.

Today, the authorities are assuring the population: because of the moratorium on savings, money will not disappear anywhere. It is not true. The money of the funded component of the pension will not be transferred to non-state pension funds - we are talking about the requisition of these funds.

Requisition is a painful thing, although for the time being it is not felt. For the working population, this is the deprivation of part of future pensions, for the country's economy, the withdrawal of huge funds, hundreds of billions of rubles, from actually credit resources. But the economy is already going to suffer very badly - foreign sanctions block access to external debt financing, and now it will be impossible to take this money from the domestic market.

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“Most likely, in 2016 there will be no funded component in pensions: they deceived the people for two years, and then they will simply cancel it and that’s it”

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What's next? Most likely, in 2016 there will be no funded component in pensions at all: for two years they deceived the people, and then they simply cancel it - and that's it. We are dealing, unfortunately, with an absolutely unprofessional, irresponsible policy, which only temporary workers are capable of. This is also indicated, by the way, by such a painful reaction at the top to the demarche of Deputy Economic Development Minister Sergei Belyakov, who apologized on his Facebook page for the decision on pensions. It is good that conscientious and honest people, like Belyakov, still remained in the government. But: he spoke out, and he was fired. And this, in my opinion, is not the last precedent of this kind, although, perhaps, without public demarches in social networks - people will simply leave on their own. The Belyakov incident is evidence that there is confusion and vacillation in power, no one wants to be held responsible for unprofessional, populist decisions.

The situation is aggravated by another unprofessional and irresponsible step - a presidential decree banning the import of agricultural products from Western countries into Russia. Replacing imports with similar domestic goods on the shelves will not work for a completely natural reason. In crop production, for example, the growing season is actually over. Under such conditions, our producers are not too ready to “replace” imports, although they claim otherwise. Perhaps they are counting on government assistance. But it will not help - there is no money, the resources of the National Welfare Fund have already been allocated. Plus, we will have to take into account how we have developed agriculture so far - last year we doubled insurance premiums for individual entrepreneurs and farmers: where is the labor enthusiasm? So in the short term, at least a rise in prices is inevitable - and everyone will feel it.