Epress.am News from Armenia
Pension reforms in Armenia are aimed at the largest group of voters, pensioners, by keeping them drug dependent on a 5,000 AMD vote, said Armenia’s former prime minister, economist Hrant Bagratyan, while speaking to journalists today.
Proposing to tie pensions directly with the average salary, Bagratyan said that the “optimal” pension amount must be 50% of the country’s average salary; however, in Armenia it has dropped from 34% to 20%.
Bagratyan also made comparisons with the relationship between average salaries and pension amounts in neighboring countries:
“In 1995, [monthly] pension payments were $5.70 [USD] in Armenia, $5 in Azerbaijan and $4 in Georgia. The average salary, respectively, was $17.40, $13 and $10. In 2010, the average salary became $286 in Armenia, $390 in Azerbaijan and $323 in Georgia, [while] pension payments were $60, $100 and $48 [respectively].” Saying that these indicators must be observed while taking into account the six-fold devaluation of Armenia’s currency, the dram, the former prime minister predicts that in Georgia’s case, the figures will increase drastically in the coming two months.
The other negative aspect of the reforms, in Bagratyan’s opinion, is that the domestic budget “under pressure from the oligarchs” received an additional burden: “If anyone wants to increase the amount of his future pension and decides to transfer to a monthly fund, for example, 5% of his salary, then matching that payment, according to the law, will be not the employer but the state, which has already established the state pension.”
Bagratyan recalled that the initiative by the opposition group the Armenian National Congress proposes responsibility to be placed on the employer and not the state, to make those funds tax-free, and invest it all in Armenia, and not export the funds and products, as do the country’s major businesses today.