It was proposed to reduce the length of service for retirement: what is the essence of the changes

Professor Zubets: “This contradicts the pension reform”

The State Duma proposed softening the conditions for obtaining the right to early retirement. According to the bill submitted to the lower house, the insurance period required for this should be reduced by five years – to 37 and 32 years, respectively, for men and women. Experts interviewed by MK differed in their assessments: some find the idea quite sound, but unrealizable, others consider it a useless PR campaign.

According to the current legislation, “persons with an insurance record of at least 42 and 37 years (men and women, respectively), an old-age insurance pension may be assigned 24 months before reaching the age prescribed by law.” According to the deputies who are the authors of the new bill, this norm is purely declarative in nature and is not applicable in practice, since “the overwhelming majority of high school graduates continue their studies in higher or secondary educational institutions and graduate from them at the age of 23-24, after which they begin to work.” .

“In addition, the expected size of the pension does not encourage young people to work in the field of “white” wages and make appropriate contributions to extra-budgetary funds,” notes the explanatory note to the document. – This level of “gray” income persists for a long time. It is quite obvious that control measures will not be able to bring citizens’ incomes into the “white” zone.”

A solution to the problem may be to reduce the duration of the insurance period to 37 and 32 years. According to the authors of the innovation, this norm will encourage citizens to work in the “white” zone of the economy and pay contributions to extra-budgetary funds. It will allow up to 50% of wages to be brought out of the shadows, which will fully compensate for budgetary expenses associated with the actual reduction of the retirement age for citizens who will receive the right to early retirement.

“For many Russians, the issue of insurance coverage is very delicate and even painful,” says BitRiver Communications Director, economist Andrei Loboda. – The current norm of 42 and 37 years for men and women does not suit everyone. The problem is that the time spent studying at a university is not taken into account in the length of service; accordingly, people have to work longer, and even the retirement age has been raised as part of the reform of recent years. At the same time, the rights of those Russians who began working in private business in the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR and who did not receive official salaries are infringed.”

Today, it is mainly workers in hazardous or heavy industries who retire early. The new bill takes into account the interests of millions of people – those who would have to prove to the Social Fund that they have worked the number of years required for insurance coverage. However, the initiative will certainly have opponents, Loboda believes. Their main counter-argument: there is no need to change anything in order for more contributions to go to the chronically deficit Social Fund.

This opinion is not shared by all experts. “I don’t really understand,” says Sergei Smirnov, leading researcher at INION RAS. – what is the connection between the right to early registration of a state insurance pension and the “color” of income – “white” or “gray”? Doubts arise regarding the elaboration and adequacy of the project, which is unlikely to be continued. Let me also remind you that if you do not accumulate the required length of service and number of points, you will be assigned a social pension at the level of the subsistence level in the region. I would also understand if the initiative of legislators was aimed at people with low wages, without qualifications and professional knowledge. It is very important for them to start receiving small but regular payments from their insurance pension as soon as possible. Then it would be a measure of social support. And when there is no targeted approach, then the motivation and consequences of the introduced bill are unclear.”

Professor of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Alexey Zubets, for his part, sees the problem that the bill contradicts the pension reform, which is precisely aimed at increasing the length of the insurance period. Today, the law provides for early retirement if there are some preferential grounds – heavy duty, harmful working conditions, participation in military operations. If all this is missing, there remains one more opportunity to retire earlier than the generally established period – if the pension is not paid in full. Finally, the economy is acutely short of workers, and the budget has problems with income, so the idea has no chance of implementation, the professor is sure.