The government is unlikely to raise the retirement age until at least 2015, Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova said Monday, weighing in on the debate about ways to ease the country's fiscal burden.
Russia has to divert in excess of 1 trillion rubles ($32.5 billion) from the federal budget to cover a hole in the Pension Fund this year. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Friday that the retirement age "inevitably" had to increase, although he noted that the government was not yet discussing the issue.
“It won't happen in the near future,” Golikova told reporters after a Presidium meeting. “This requires very serious analytical work and very serious readiness among the people.”
Russia will first experiment with how many pensioners are willing to accept a longer slog to retirement by encouraging them to stay employed later, Golikova said. As the test begins in 2015, the government will offer a 6 percent addition to the basic retirement allowance for every year of work beyond the standard retirement age, she said.
If the current work force of 10 million pensioners swells in the wake of the change, the government may consider increasing that age from the current 60 years for men and 55 years for women, Golikova said.
Some professionals — such as coal miners, airline pilots, loggers and rescuers — are allowed to retire much younger, which reduces the average retirement age to 54 years for men and 52 years for women.
About one-fourth of the 38 million retired Russians continue to work to supplement their small pensions. By comparison, the United States allows men and women to retire at 65, while Britain and Italy draw the line at 65 years for men and 60 years for women.
Golikova said the proposal also created a dilemma, since the longer a person works, the higher that person's eventual pension will be. Thus, raising the retirement age may in fact cause the Pension Fund's deficit to grow wider, she said.
Also, people may question any decision to extend their employment age because of the low life expectancy for men in Russia, which is still just 59 years, Golikova said.
“People are concerned about how long they will be able to live after retirement and if they will be able to live until retirement and use their lifetime pension savings,” she said.
In fact, a higher retirement age would only cover a fraction of the deficit, according to Pension Fund head Anton Drozdov. He said the move would bring 70 billion rubles ($2.3 billion) to the fund's coffers in 2012.
The Presidium, a downsized version of the Cabinet, also discussed plans to reduce unemployment next year, a problem that appears to be losing its urgency. Authorities counted 5.6 million jobless people last month, down 850,000 people from a year ago, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said.
The figures mean that the country's unemployment rate went down to 7.3 percent of the employable population, from 8.5 percent, Putin said.
Golikova said the government planned to reduce spending on employment measures — including retraining, creating new jobs and increasing labor mobility — from this year's 40.5 billion rubles. She did not name an amount for next year.