UPDATE2: Russian government yet to approve retirement age rise–min

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MOSCOW, Feb 1 (PRIME) -- The Russian government has not yet decided to increase the retirement age as time for it is not ripe, Labor and Social Protection Minister Maxim Topilin told reporters on Wednesday.

“No, the government has not decided to increase the retirement age…It is possible that experts now are doing something, discussing something, calculating and so on. We think that the time for it is yet to come,” he said.

A representative of Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets confirmed that the decision was not made.

Izvestiya daily reported citing two sources close to the government that the authorities have decided to increase the retirement age, and are now analyzing consequences to decide on the parameters.

“The issue the retirement age increase has been conceptually solved,” a source told the daily.

He said that the government is discussing several options of the increase, including raising the retirement age for women to 63 years and for men to 65 years gradually, by six months per year. Another option is to make the threshold for men and women flat at 63 years, the daily reported.

A decision may be announced in 2018, when a new government is formed after the presidential elections.

The government’s social bloc has already prepared calculations basing on the retirement age of up to 65 years for men and up to 60 years for women, one of the participants of government meetings told Izvestiya. “The social block will publicly oppose the increase, but they understand that the principal decision has been made and decided to secure themselves with the calculations,” a source close to the government said.

The social bloc wants to keep the five year difference between the retirement ages for men and women, but a source close to the financial bloc said that there is no demographic sense in that, as women’s life expectancy is higher.

Last year state Pension Fund’s head Anton Drozdov said that a gradual increase of the retirement age and the age for payments of social pensions will allow the country to cut budget spending by 640 billion rubles from 2030.

But a Pension Fund representative said the fund has not received any government orders to calculate pension disbursement if the retirement age is increased.

“The Pension Fund has not received any government rulings to calculate dynamics of spending on pension payments under the condition of an increase of the retirement age,” the representative said.

(60.0851 rubles – U.S. $1)

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