Working pensioners were offered both indexation and recalculation of points

Experts appreciated the new legislative initiative to increase payments to older workers

A draft law has been submitted to the State Duma, designed to move the topic of indexation of insurance pensions of working pensioners off the ground. Its authors, deputies from the LDPR faction, propose to recalculate pensions for this social category from January 1, 2023, based on the maximum value of the individual pension coefficient (IPC) – ten instead of three. However, there are practically no chances for the approval of the document by the parliament and, in general, for its favorable acceptance by the state.

“Normal recalculation, normal indexation of pensions,” Yaroslav Nilov, deputy head of the LDPR faction, chairman of the parliamentary committee on labor and social policy, announced this initiative on his Telegram channel.

The essence of the changes is not so much in a one-time, one-time recalculation, but in a return to the mechanism of annual indexation of the insurance pension of working pensioners. Until 2016, it applied to all recipients of pensions, but due to the then federal budget deficit, it was canceled for working pensioners. Representatives of this social category (about 9 million people) began to receive annually from August 1 only a modest allowance, equivalent to three points or pension coefficients. From August 1, 2022, it is 354 rubles. Accordingly, in the new version, with the addition of seven points, it will be more than a thousand rubles.

Meanwhile, in July 2021, the same authors were already submitting a bill to the State Duma regarding the return of indexation of pensions to working pensioners. “This is an urgent issue of social justice, the issue of returning the trust of people who have every right to honest compensation for payments for honest long-term work,” Nilov said then. The initiative did not receive any continuation. According to the project of the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation, in the period from 2023 to 2025, pensions will be indexed by an average of 6.8%. This does not apply to working pensioners.

“And now everything will remain the same,” said Alexander Safonov, professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. – There is not enough money in the budget, and even more so in today’s conditions, when the deficit is growing. This is the principled position of the state.”

At the same time, according to the expert, there is no point in improving the current system of pension coefficients. If we are to solve the problem radically, we need to return to the classic, transparent, understandable insurance model, when the indexation of pensions is tied to wages. After all, a pension is a form of replacement for lost earnings, that’s what is fundamentally important. And everywhere in the world it is indexed not according to the level of inflation, as in Russia, but after the increase in wages. This approach is much more logical, since it is more connected with the real economy and absolutely does not depend on the desire (or unwillingness) of legislators to change something. In addition, Safonov notes, it is the dynamics of wages that influences the formation of the budget of the Pension Fund: the better it is, the more money the PFR receives.

“Pension coefficients obscure the picture of future income,” says the interlocutor of MK. “As a result, young people, and even older people, lose motivation: they are not interested in participating in whites, official wage formation schemes and, accordingly, pensions.”

As for the resumption of the mechanism for indexing pensions for working pensioners, this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it would be nice. But there are some nuances that few people know about. In particular, about 30% of the representatives of this category are recipients of early pensions, for example, security officials, whose seniority pensions are much higher than standard insurance ones. And these people continue to be registered in the civil service.

It turns out that a significant part of the indexed money will go to them, as well as to those “early pensioners” who work in industries with harmful working conditions (for example, chemical) and have a higher pension. In general, Safonov concludes, today the state should support, first of all, those who, due to low wages, have a small pension, and who either cannot work for health reasons or have no chance of finding a job.

“Of course, from the point of view of social justice, it would be reasonable to recalculate the pensions of working pensioners on the basis of ten points instead of the previous three,” says Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Economic University. Plekhanova Ludmila Ivanova-Shvets. “But the government has long indicated its attitude to this topic, saying that there is no money for indexation and there will not be. It is unlikely that today, in even more difficult economic realities, its position will change.”

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28857 dated August 30, 2022

Newspaper headline:
Seven points for happiness