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Increase in Pension, Other Funds to Fail Solve Social Problems
October 19, 2004
By Itar-Tass
MOSCOW - The budgets of the Russian Pension Fund and funds of social insurance as well as of mandatory medical insurance are to increase next year. However, some social problems will remain, claimed participants in a roundtable on forming state extra-budgetary funds, which was held at the Federation Council upper chamber on Tuesday.
The budget of the Pension Fund will rise by 18 percent in 2005 as against the current year. At the same time, in line with the indexation of pensions, a rise in their average will be less than this year. The federal budget channeled 99.9 billion roubles to the Pension Fund to implement the law on cash compensations.
Financing of outlays for targeted social aid will climb up by nearly 44 percent, including by ten billion roubles to provide pensioners and invalids with necessary medicines, said representatives of the Pension Fund and the Audit Chamber.
It is also planned to increase the maximum size of allowances for temporary disability as well as maternity allowances from 11,700 to 12,480 roubles.
Roundtable participants found it inadmissible a suggested change in the payment of allowances for temporary disability from the social insurance system only from the third day of a disease. Introduction of this norm would help to save more than 14.5 billion roubles, but this should not be done this way, claimed members of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy.
The roundtable emphasized that federal laws, determining the financial base and possibilities for raising incomes of population, should be of primary importance. The meeting recommended that the government should work out a concept for the development of mandatory social insurance for a mid-term and long-term perspectives and reform a system of mandatory social insurance in strict compliance with international law, conventions and recommendations of the International Labour Organisation.
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