The pension system reform will bring benefits to all the involved categories of people and this reform can no longer be postponed, while the criticism leveled at the relevant bill proposed by the Government is groundless and populist and shows the resistance put up by those who have so far benefitted from considerable privileges compared with most of the pensioners, Prime Minister Pavel Filip said in the program “Good evening” on the public TV channel Moldova 1, quoted by IPN.
The Premier said the intention to reform the pension system should start from the analysis of the state of affairs in the field, which he considers gloomy. “On the one hand, 83% of the pensioners get a pension lower than the minimum subsistence level in the Republic of Moldova. On the other hand, there is outrageous inequity. I will give an example. A judge now has a salary of 20,000 to 30,000 lei. The judges retire at the age of 50 and the pension replacement rate is of 80-85% of their salary. A surgeon, for example, has a salary of 5,000-6,000 lei and retires at the age of 62 and the pension replacement rate is of 28%. Do you want to say that our pension system is equitable? Surely not. The judges, prosecutors, state functionaries and MPs are not many in number, but their resistance to the system is very great,” stated Pavel Filip.
The Premier noted that the reform is pressing as the risks are great for the whole society. “I want everyone to understand that if we do not do this reform, the pension system in the Republic of Moldova will fail in 2-3 years. We will be unable to pay pensions or, at least, during the next few years, if the pension replacement rate is of 28%. By 2020, the replacement rate will decrease to 13-15 %. So, the pensions will be even lower,” he stated.
According to Pavel Filip, the benefits of the reform are real and will be felt in the near future. “If we start to implement it on January 1, 2017, as we planned, the pensioners who will enter the system, which is those who will retire in 2017, will have a pension that will be 1.5 or 2 times higher than in the current pension system, especially for those who retired after 1999, whose pension is calculated based on a defective formula that does not reflect the reality or the value of the money they paid to the social budget. That’s why we will start immediately, in 2017. Those who retired in 2001 to 2008 will benefit from a pension rise of up to 35% in 2017 already. This way the pensions will exceed the minimum subsistence level. The negative side is that we will have to increase the retirement age for women to 62 years and that for men to 65. But this will happen in ten years. The retirement age will rise annually by four or six months during ten years and the impact will not be immediate,” stated the Prime Minister.
He also said that the planned reform has three stages. “As of January 1, the pensions for the police will be managed by the National Housie of Social Insurance. On April 1, we will start to valorize and index the pensions. On July 1 already, the new retirement age rates will start to be applied,” said Pavel Filip.
According to him, the reformation of the pension system is an internal solution to an internal problem. “I want to tell you that this reform was imposed by no one, as they say. This reform and the rise in the retirement age weren’t imposed by the International Monetary Fund. We do not have another way out,” stated the Premier.
