REUTERS
Ukraine is in a dire need of a pension reform which could upgrade the whole pension system, and in this sense raising the retirement age or the period of pensionable service are one of the mechanisms of the reform, that’s according to IMF spokesman Gerry Rice who held a traditional briefing in Washington on Thursday.
Rice said that the Ukrainian authorities had agreed with the need to carry out pension reform, to provide for decent pensions and balance the Pension Fund’s budget. The pension system should be clearer and more transparent, according to the IMF spokesman.
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 alsoPM Groysman unveils plans to radically change pension system in 2017Pension 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 $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.