Why There Were Few Contributions to New Pension System in January: Paper

In January this year, transferred from Armenia's state budget to the mandatory pension system was 674 million 144 thousand AMD, reports local daily Haykakan Zhamanak.

The newspaper reports that, according to the new pension system, 5% is deducted from employees' wages, while an additional 5% comes from the state budget. Contributions for the entire year are expected to be 20.6 billion AMD. This means that the average monthly contribution should be 1.7 billion AMD — much more than the 674 million transferred in January. 

"[While] the reason for such ‘under-fulfillment’ is not yet clear, there are a few options. One is that the majority of employers are waiting for the Constitutional Court’s final decision and not making the mandatory pension deductions. The second is that the government has no information of [employees’] actual salaries. Third, after the introduction of this system, the number of those working in the shadow economy drastically increased — at the expense of ‘white’ [legal] jobs," reports the paper.