Pension: save up or whatever you want...

On May 17, the head of the Ministry of Finance, Anton Siluanov, said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel that working Russians should take care of themselves in order to receive a decent pension

The Ministry of Finance, together with the Bank of Russia, prepared proposals for "revitalizing the funded element of the pension system." First of all, we are talking about voluntary pension savings on special accounts in banks or in pension funds. This mechanism, Siluanov noted, could start operating in the second half of 2017 or from the beginning of 2018.

If you call a spade a spade, then the proposal of the Ministry of Finance practically means the rejection of the mandatory funded component of the pension: if you want to have a decent pension, save it, if you don’t want it, do whatever you want. Just in case, do not forget: now the average pension in the country is 12-13 thousand rubles.

The system of mandatory pension savings has been introduced since the early 2000s through a virtually three-year freeze. Implementation was difficult, but the institution of pensions was nevertheless strengthened. Now, in view of the unprofessional, short-sighted economic policy, all the work done is being put to rest.

Like any other department, the Ministry of Finance only thinks about having as much money in the budget as possible. And pensioners are far away. And not very interesting.

The Ministry of Finance needs to solve its own problems: the department came up with a proposal on pension savings due to the need to accumulate funds collected through insurance premiums into a “common pot”, the contents of which are then redistributed among pensioners. Now, in fact, it is 22%, of which 6% is a mandatory funded component. All the money went to the distribution part - to the savings accounts of citizens. When more goes into the “common pot”, the volume of transfers from the federal budget from the Ministry of Finance decreases. Thus, due to the new reform, the Ministry of Finance hopes to save hundreds of billions of rubles.

Of course, other countries did the same, and officials there said: the funded part of the pension is the prerogative of the citizens themselves, what you save up will be yours. But Russia is different. In our country, people will not voluntarily accumulate on the former, mandatory scale - they live in a different economic and social environment. They just don't have the culture to save up for old age (it's not for nothing that the funded component of pensions was introduced in Russia as mandatory). They had to be given the opportunity to get used to the new conditions, to feel that this is the norm. As a result, real big money would appear in the pension system - and therefore in the economy. Now everything will happen exactly the opposite.