The Russian authorities will "carefully study" ex-finance minister Alexei Kudrin’s pension reform proposals, an aide to the Russian president, Arkady Dvorkovich, said on Tuesday.
In an article published on Monday, Kudrin and the head of the Economic expert group Yevsei Gurevich propose increasing the retirement age and the number of years of service needed to receive a pension, and to postpone pensions for those who continue to work after the retirement age.
The authors say the only alternatives to those measures would be raising taxes and increasing the Pension Fund deficit.
“Your proposals will be carefully studied, thank you,” Dvorkovich wrote in his Twitter account.
The Russian government has to spend more and more budget money to keep the Pension Fund afloat. Budget transfers to cover the Pension Fund deficit increased from 1.5 percent of GDP in 2007 to 5.5 percent in 2010, although the Fund increased pension contributions it receives from employers from 20 percent of salary in 2005-2010 to 26 percent in 2011.
