Ministry of Social Policy has developed three models of increasing social standards / Photo from UNIAN
The Ukrainian government is to announce next week plans on increasing wages and pensions, according to Pavlo Rozenko, Minister of Social Policy.
"When the State Budget of Ukraine was only being approved, we have clearly established that the social standards should rise by 13% from December 2015,” said Rozenko on air of Ukraine’s TV Channel 5.
“But all of us, including the Ukrainian president and the prime minister, have repeatedly said that we would do everything to find the resources to raise them even before that time. It all depends, and has [always] depended on the state of the economy, the state of hostilities and negotiations on debt restructuring. And it is the success of the Ministry of Finance and the government as a whole on the issue of delaying debt payments for four years and a 20% write-off of Ukraine’s debts that provides an excellent opportunity to find the resources we can invest in the indexation of wages and pensions," said Rozenko.
Read alsoUkraine wants to cancel special pensions and introduce funded system from 2017The Minister said that the Ministry of Social Policy has developed three models of increasing social standards - wages, pensions and all social payments.
"These three options cost about UAH 5-15 billion until the year end, so these are considerable funds. And today, in my opinion, the time has come to announce next week, with some cautious confidence (we will not call the percentage points, the dates), the authorities' plans to raise social standards," said Rozenko.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk during Friday government meeting reported that the Cabinet was studying the possibility to increase wages.
One source of securing higher wages and social standards in general may be savings from the restructuring of part of the public debt.