UPDATE2: Govt to allot 5 bln rbl to upgrade preretirement age people skills

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MOSCOW, Jul 16 (PRIME) -- The Russian government plans to allot 5 billion rubles annually to improve the qualification of citizens of a preretirement age, Labor and Social Protection Minister Maxim Topilin said Monday at a meeting of the State Duma’s committee on budget and taxes.

“We are developing a program of skills upgrade for those people who will be in a preretirement age. The government will allocate relevant funds for this, now we assume that it can be around 5 billion rubles annually,” he said.

Topilin also said that the Labor and Social Protection Ministry is currently in a process to agree on a draft bill to change the size of unemployment benefits with the Finance Ministry.

The government currently plans to raise the retirement age to 65 years from 60 years for men and to 63 years from 55 years for women.

The committee on budget and taxes on Monday recommended the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, to approve the first reading of a bill on a gradual increase of the retirement age in 2019–2034.

Topilin said the government does not plan to revise the proposed hike in the retirement age for women to 60 years.

“No, we do not plan such amendments,” he said.

The government seeks to achieve pension growth twice above the inflation level by making amendments to the pension legislation, Topilin also said.

“Over past few years, we got accustomed to live in other scales, when inflation was 10% a year, 12%, and it seems to us that it is very small when pensions are increased by 3–4%. But this is comparable to inflation, this year we indexed pensions by 3.7%, and inflation was 2.5%. Almost by half higher than growth of prices. Such things never happened,” he said.

The minister expects that inflation will be below 4% in 2018. “With the current inflation parameters, 1,000 (rubles of pension increase) – this will be around 7% (indexation). Such a pace – two times above inflation, which we could allow in a certain period of time – is the task that we set,” he added.

Without raising the retirement age, growth of pensions will remain only at the inflation level, Topilin said.

(62.2934 rubles – U.S. $1)

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