Government submits retirement age hike bill to State Duma

MOSCOW, Jun 18 (PRIME) -- Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a ruling to submit a bill on gradually raising the retirement age to the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, the government’s press service said on June 16.

Under the bill, the retirement age will be raised to 65 years from 60 years for men and to 63 years from 55 years for women.

The bill, to take force from January 1, 2019, encompasses a transition period from 2019 till 2034 with an annual increase of the retirement age by one year.

Thus men born in 1959 and women born in 1964 will have a right to retire in 2020, at the age of 61 years and 56 years, respectively. Men born in 1960 and women born in 1965 will be able to retire in 2022, at the age of 62 years and 57 years, respectively, and so on.

The State Duma’s labor committee will start considering the bill later on Monday, the committee’s head Yaroslav Nilov told PRIME.

First Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the government will earmark resources that the budget will receive from the retirement age hike for raising pensions.

“The main task is to raise pensions to current pensioners. Resources that the government will receive from it will be sent to the Pension Fund,” he told Rossiya 24 television channel late on June 15.

In 2019, growth of pensions will be by 2 percentage points higher than inflation, Siluanov said.

The proposed pension and tax reforms should ensure a new quality of the country’s economic growth and raise the quality of people’s lives, he also said.

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said that an income of a Russian pensioner will increase by around 12,000 rubles per year in 2019.

She also said that the number of labor force in Russia reduces by 400,000 people annually.

(62.6851 rubles – U.S. $1)

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