Russian PM: Russia pension reform - no failure

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is convinced that the pension reform in Russia has not been failed.

Kasyanov confessed that many have no idea yet as to what to do with their pension accumulations.

"I do not deny that there is the government's fault in this. But private management companies should have worked too if they wanted people to trust them. But there was little information," the Premier said.

However, this does not mean that the system will be inefficient, he continued. "Our goal is not to make people join private companies but to offer them free choice so that they could see their pension funds growing," the premier added.

He also acknowledged that so far few people have shown interest in placing their money in private companies.

The premier also noted that Russia is an extremely conservative country. "We have always been more conservative than other countries. We have never been used to trusting our money to private companies, and the 1998 crisis was a tough lesson for us," the premier said.