Putin Speaks About Pension Reform

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that an accumulative pension system will be introduced stage-by-stage in Russia. When answering questions live on RTR and ORT, he said that this would only fully affect those citizens aged 30 years and younger. He said that the system would only concern Russian between 30 and 50 to a limited degree, while older people and, in particular, pensions would not be affected at all. The president pointed out that enterprises and establishments were paying 28% of the pension fund, while a further 2% would go into the accumulative section in 2002. The head of state said that a person would have the right to use the accumulative part as he wished in the future. This, he stressed, would allow wages to be taken out of the shadow economy, as a person would demand that his employer pay him in full and not in a black envelope, because the size of his pension would depend on this in the future. "And this is a very important principle," said Vladimir Putin. According to him, quarterly indexing would be conducted in relation to current pensioners from 2002.