Page 52 - RUSRptSept18

previously forecasted budget deficit of 1.5% of GDP, as was fixed in the law, we expect a budget surplus of 1.5-2% of GDP," Siluanov said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher weekly news roundup on the Rossiya-1 television channel Tass reports.
6.1.1 Budget dynamics - specific issues...
The cost to the federal budget for implementation the softening of the pension reforms proposed by president Vladimir Putin in a televised address on August 29 will cost RUB500bn ($7.3bn) in six years, First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said. Putin suggests raising retirement age to 60 for women instead of 63 from 55 now, while leaving the increase for men at 60 to 65 years. He also introduced a number of exemptions and spending increases to ease the pain of the changes. The low retirement ages are a legacy of the Soviet Union but pensions are key for the population. Few pensioners actually stop working when they reach retirement age, so pensions become a supplementary income for the last third of a citizens life and has a large impact on their quality of life. Raising the retirement ages thus is very unpopular. "The President of the Russian Federation made a series of initiatives to clarify proposals on pension legislation changes, which were prepared by the government and are in the State Duma," Siluanov said. "According to our estimates, financial resources for stated proposals total about 500bn ($7.3bn) within the six-year period," Siluanov said as cited by Tass. Putin also introduced preferential retirement in the age of 50-57 for mothers with more than three children and keep land tax and real property tax benefits for citizens at the level of the current retirement age. Putin also noted the need of introducing employer’s liability for unjustified dismissal or refusal to employ pre-retirement age individuals.
VEB published a macro projection for 2018-2021 with a base case featuring a pension age increase by half a year per year starting in 2020 . The very next day, the projection was deleted from VEB's website. The Minister of Economy announced at the "Russia: New Opportunities" Forum that such an increase is indeed being discussed, with several proposals on the topic already formulated. When prodded by journalists on where such discussions are occurring, he replied "in society." Both stories mark continued paralysis on pension reform, despite an increasingly evident need to do something: the number of workers per pensioner continues to shrink, as do pension benefits in real terms.
The Ministry of Finance proposes environmental tax to begin in 2020. As
52 RUSSIA Country Report September 2018 www.intellinews.com