MP doubts Kazakhstan's pension savings system

Kazakhstan Majilis deputy from the Communist party Vladislav Kossarev has doubts about Kazakhstan’s pension system, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the deputy as saying at the expanded meeting of the People’s Communists party. “We want the accumulated funds of over 3 trillion tenge ($20 billion) on the accounts of the pension system to work for the society and development of the country’s economy. We should ask Mr Marchenko: until when are we going to play hide-and-seek and hide a real situation? We should not entrust money to a bank that offers such a low interest rate. Before thinking about raising the retirement age, we should make the bank’s employees responsible for the real value of the money placed in the bank,” Kossarev said. According to him, pension savings funds are growing extremely slowly. “The growth is only 2.8 percent per year. While inflation rate is around 8 percent and second tier banks offer interest rates of 8-10 percent on deposits. This makes people doubt viability of the pension savings systems. And we cannot change it today. Because it would mean a further collapse of this system,” Majilisman added. As for raising the retirement for women from 58 to 63 years, the MP voiced the party’s position: “We are against the raise. People still remember when women retired at the age of 55 and then the system was changed to 58. So back then many of the women had benefits that allowed retirement at 50. So for them the retirement age jumped by 8 years. It was very difficult, but the country was going through hard times back then. Today things are different. It is the time when all the people see the growing prosperity and well-being of Kazakhstan. This step would mean improving the country's economy by losing social achievements,” Kossarev said. By Aidana Ussupova

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