The launch of the new system of funded pensions, in which citizens can finance future pension payments at the expense of personal income, should happen in January 2021. This is stated in the bill prepared by the Ministry of Finance, which is published on the portal of draft regulatory legal acts.
The text of the draft law has not yet been published; at present, the initiative is at the stage of public discussion, which will last until September 30. Until this time, citizens can leave their opinions and make proposals aimed at improving the system proposed by the Ministry of Finance.
The goal of the initiative is to provide Russians with “the possibility of generating, through personal contributions, additional sources of financing retirement income in the non-state pension system with stimulating support from the state”.
As noted in the department, such a need arose due to the low level of personal participation of citizens in the formation of their retirement income.
In early September, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation sent a bill to the Ministry of Labor under the working title “On the Guaranteed Pension Product” (GPP), which proposes a new scheme for the formation of voluntary pension savings. It will have to replace the concept of individual pension capital (IPC), developed since 2016 by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Russia.
According to Deputy Finance Minister Aleksey Moiseev, the innovation will solve the problem of the so-called “silent people” using a private management company or non-state pension fund (NPF) to form the funded part of their pension. In turn, the head of the ministry, Anton Siluanov, emphasized that participation in the GPP will be exclusively voluntary in nature, while incentives are provided for both employees and enterprises.
“Therefore, a guaranteed product is created that is interesting in terms of deductions, which allows you to increase your pension savings in addition to the state pension that a person will receive,” Siluanov added.
We add that the project presented by the Ministry of Finance was supported by the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina, the chairman of the board of the Pension Fund of Russia Anton Drozdov and the Minister of Economic Development Maxim Oreshkin.
“We need to wait for all the components, but it is already clear that this is the future”
According to Sergei Vostretsov, a member of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs, global practice shows that with personal deductions, people's pensions are higher than usual. It would be nice if such a system appeared in Russia, he added.
“If the Ministry of Finance offers an understandable product and system, it will explain that the pension will be many times higher, people will go for it. Now there is the practice of investing in real estate and teaching the so-called second pension from renting an apartment. You won’t have to do this with a new product. After all, not everyone has the opportunity to purchase real estate. But now there will be such a financial banking product, when it will be possible to invest money and they will work. However, people must first believe this. It is necessary to wait for all the components, but it is already clear that this is the future. A person should have the right to save for an additional pension, ”the parliamentarian said in an interview with RT.
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According to a leading expert at the Center for Political Technologies, economist Nikita Maslennikov, the Finance Ministry’s initiative was an expected step and replaced the model of individual retirement capital, which assumed "auto-subscription", that is, citizens would connect to it by default.
“In essence, this is the restoration of the funded pension system, which is now in a frozen state. By and large, this initiative can only be welcomed, because here two important effects are achieved. Firstly, this is a more confident provision for people in old age, ”remarked the interlocutor of RT.
Secondly, as Maslennikov explained, the money received as part of the new funded initiative will have the form of a long investment resource for the state economy.
“Another thing is that so far there are a lot of questions about how it will work. Because today in the voluntary pension system there are 6.2 million people who have invested in it about 1.2 trillion rubles. This is not small, but not the calculated effect that one could hope for, ”Maslennikov pointed out.