Thursday, May 15 2014

At its today's extraordinary session, the Armenian parliament approved the extended option of amendments to the law "On funded pension" that was submitted by the government. If earlier the government offered to stop functioning of the 76th clause of the above mentioned law, that supposes payment of fines  for abandoning to transfer the relevant pension payments, now another three points were added to the draft law. 

Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artem Asatryan said that the bill suggests adding a provision that will relieve the citizens falling under the pension reforms of the responsibility for non- payment or failure to meet the time limit for the relevant payments. In addition, if a citizen files a statement that he refuses to participate in the accumulative system, the employer has the right not to make the relevant calculations to transfer the pension contributions. The minister added that the share of the state participation in the given system will continue to be transferred to the pension funds till September 30, i.e.  the date given by the Constitutional Court's decision to the Government to finally remove the flaws from the bill.  Asatryan stressed that the given bill is a temporary decision meant to provide the executive power with time to discuss the issue comprehensively and work out a solution, which would satisfy the majority.  The minister also pointed out that the Government does not give up the idea to introduce accumulative pensions, because "given the demographic situation and existing resources in the country, it will never be possible to provide people with normal pensions without such a system" in Armenia. The law will function till 30 September. Before that the government will submit to the parliament the package of final draft laws on the pension system. The final edition of the law will adopted till 30 September, taking into consideration the decision adopted by the Constitutional Court on 2 April, according to which several points of the law were recognized anti-Constitutional.