Паст инфо

The National Assembly finished 4-day sessions on October 25. Many legislative initiatives raised on the last day were left unsolved. The voting will take place during the next plenary session on 12 November.

Among the packages discussed was the package of legislative changes introduced by the government on improving the legislative framework that is aimed at ensuring the implementation of pension reforms that was a topic of fierce discussions both last time, September 13, and this time.

Mainly the questions of the opposition members represented in the RA Parliament rather concerned the reforms of the pensions’ system and feasibility of the system of obligatory funded pensions, which will come into force since 2014, than suggested changes.

The law on funded pensions was adopted in 2010, which states that the obligation of funded payments since January 1, 2014 will concern those born after January 1, 1974. In other words, those people who will become 40 years old in 2014. In fact, the results of this initiative in the best case will be visible in 23 years when people will reach their retirement age of 63.

The opposition speakers were interested in the possibility of returning and compensating those funded payments.

Particularly the leader of the Armenian National Congress fraction Levon Zurabyan assured that implementation of the funded pensions will only create new opportunities of enrichment for the current authorities and further impoverishment of the population, given that the business and property in Armenia are concentrated in the hands of several authorities. According to the member of the RA Parliament, only those who have backing and financing of the state will get involved in the business administration of the funded pensions’ foundations.

‘The absence of competition will not let the citizens to choose the most efficient foundation administrators, because they simply will not appear in the current monopolistic environment’, assured L. Zurabyan. According to him, good ideas will be discredited, which will make implementation of similar reforms by true reformers more complicated in future.