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Russia's retirement age should be raised - pension fund

© RIA Novosti . Mikhail Mordasov  / Go to the mediabankRussia's retirement age should be raised
Russia's retirement age should be raised  - Sputnik International
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The question of raising Russia's retirement age cannot be avoided, the chairman of Russia's Pension Fund said on Tuesday.

The question of raising Russia's retirement age cannot be avoided, the chairman of Russia's Pension Fund said on Tuesday.

"I do not think we will be able to avoid this problem. We will have to make a decision on the matter," Anton Drozdov told a conference on social security.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently said the issue was not under discussion, while the Pension Fund and the Finance Ministry earlier said that any changes to the country's retirement age would not be brought in before 2014-2015.

Russia's retirement age is lower than in most other European countries. Currently, men are entitled to retire at 60 and women at 55.

But given that the average life expectancy for Russian men is below 60, raising the retirement age would mean that many do no live to receive their pension, critics say.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in June that raising the retirement age would help bring down the Pension Fund's increasing budget deficit and raise the average monthly pension allowance from the current 7300 rubles ($237) to 10,000 ($325).

But Drozdov said the reform would hardly help relieve the fund's budget deficit, as it could only provide 90 billion rubles ($2.9 billion) at the very most - a drop in the ocean for the Fund's four-trillion ruble ($130 billion) budget.

While raising the retirement age may at first seem to fly in the face of President Dmitry Medvedev's drive to "rejuvenate cadres" across the country, experts agree it is high time something was done about Russia's crumbling pension system, which has been in place since 1992.

SVETLOGORSK, September 7 (RIA Novosti)

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