PRESS: Russian fin ministry offers to freeze pension savings 2017

MOSCOW, Mar 15 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Finance Ministry has proposed repeating a freeze of the accumulative part of pension savings for 2017, business daily Vedomosti reported Tuesday, citing three government officials.

Previously, the government froze the accumulative part of pension savings in 2014 and 2015, and used 6% of citizens’ payments for the accumulative part to pay pensions of current retirees. In December 2015, the measure was prolonged for 2016 in order to spare 342.2 billion rubles for the budget.

One of the officials said that the pension savings’ retention in 2017 could save the budget 400 billion rubles.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said earlier that the suspension of the accumulative part of pensions was a temporary measure but one of the officials polled by Vedomosti said that full cancellation of the accumulative part of pensions is being discussed among other possible ways to reform the system.

(70.1542 rubles – U.S. $1)

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