“Post of Russia” was assigned a pension – Newspaper Kommersant No. 221 (7422) dated 11/29/2022

From April 2023, Russian Post will become the sole provider of cash pensions. The relevant parliamentary amendments were supported by the government commission for legislative activities. The exclusion from the pension delivery market of private organizations, which, according to deputies, did not always fulfill their obligations to the Pension Fund well, will increase the number of customers of the state postal company by 1.5 million people.

The bill on the introduction of the Russian Post monopoly on the delivery of pensions in cash was submitted to the State Duma in October by deputies from United Russia. Yesterday, the faction announced support for the initiative by the government commission on legislative activities.

Now insurance pensions can be received in two ways. If the payment is made in a non-cash form, the Pension Fund transfers funds to the bank account in which the pensioner is served. The delivery of pensions in the form of cash is carried out by the Russian Post or a private organization. As the authors of the project note in the explanatory note to it, in 2021, 11.9 million pensioners received a pension in cash. The vast majority of them (10.4 million people) were served by the Russian Post, but 1.5 million pensioners chose a private organization as a deliverer.

However, these private companies, according to United Russia, in most cases are limited liability companies with a minimum authorized capital, which “creates significant risks of default on obligations.” It is alleged that in emergency situations they can simply refuse to fulfill their delivery obligations, in fact transferring them to the Russian Post – as has already happened in the Primorsky Territory, Amur and Irkutsk regions. The authors of the project complain that private deliveries tend to work within the city limits, where the cost of delivering pensions is minimal, while the Russian Post is forced to serve pensioners in rural areas and hard-to-reach areas. At the same time, the tariff for the delivery of pensions does not take into account differences in the cost of the provider’s services and is fixed at 1.17% of the amount of the pension.

Until 2025, Russian Post has committed to modernizing its branches, both at its own expense and with the help of transfers from the federal budget in the amount of at least 25 billion rubles. Under these conditions, the deputies are in favor of providing the state-owned company with additional support measures, including a monopoly on the delivery of pensions. The changes are expected to come into effect on April 1, 2023. The delay is necessary for the Social Fund, which will be organized by merging the PFR and the FSS to terminate its existing contracts for the delivery of pensions with private companies.

The amendments have already been approved by the relevant State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications and are “conceptually supported” by the legal department of the lower house. However, Duma lawyers asked to clarify the period during which new customers of the Russian Post can appeal against any violations in the delivery of pensions.

It should be noted that the problem that the deputies intend to solve by creating a monopoly is largely the result of the dominant position of the Russian Post in the market for the delivery of social benefits. Obviously, competition with a state-owned company on an equal footing is hardly within the power of a private organization, which is why they tend to provide their services in situations where they can minimize their financial risks. Similarly, private medical organizations choose the most capacious ones in terms of profitability from MHI tariffs, leaving the more unprofitable ones to public hospitals.

Anastasia Manuylova