Photo from UNIAN
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman says that the pension system in Ukraine will undergo a radical change in 2017, and the government will offer a package of solutions to the public.
"The pension system will be changed in 2017," Groysman said at a government meeting on Wednesday.
He stressed that the changes must be fundamental so that retirees in the country could feel how the authorities take care of them.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the government insists on pension reform in Ukraine because the accumulated imbalances do not allow the payment of decent pensions and thus require significant budgetary injections. At the same time, the government calls for a reduction in the deficit of the Pension Fund's budget as a key objective of pension reform.
Read alsoReva: Raising retirement age political requirement of IMF, Cabinet not to support itPension reform is part of the reform program approved by the International Monetary Fund. However, the memorandum signed between the government of Ukraine and the IMF management in September 2016 does not contain strict rules for raising the retirement age. It provides only recommendations for narrowing the Pension Fund's deficit because it is covered with budget funds at the moment.
The subsidies the Pension Fund plans to receive from the national budget in 2017 exceed UAH 140 billion, or about US$5.18 billion. The Ukrainian authorities and the IMF continue discussing this issue.
At the moment, the government and the IMF are developing a model of pension reform without an obligatory increase in the retirement age.