Pavlo Rozenko: Government does not propose a raise of retirement age

A bill on pension reform offered by the Government doesn't envisage a raise of retirement age. This was stated by Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Rozenko in an interview with Obozrevatel .

“The Government is elaborating a concept as well as a version of the draft law on pension reform, however the provisions of aforesaid draft law do not envisage a raise of retirement age. There won’t’ be any increase in longevity of service in the coming years”, underlined the Vice Prime Minister

As was reported earlier, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman had determined a pension reform as a topmost goal for the Government this year. The adoption of the key objectives set forth by the Government will ensure the updating of pensions of UAH 200 per month up to 1 thousand UAH per month at least for 5.6.million pensioners starting already October 1. Apart from that, the Government will abolish the taxation of retirement payments for working retirees. Also reforms which were kicked off by the Government will provide a basis to reduce the Pension Fund deficit-up to complete debt-neutral of the Pension Fund due to a number of steps, including the de-illegalization of the economy and improvement of payments concerning unified social contribution. Governmental innovations do not foresee raising of the retirement age. The pension reform is one of the burning themes pertaining to the discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the framework of the program of economic reforms in Ukraine, adopted in March 2015.

Commenting on IMF’s requirements to raise retirement age, Pavlo Rozenko noted that there is a difference between what the IMF requires from Ukraine and what is the final agreement between Ukraine and IMF.

“All information is enshrined in substantive documents. An article in the online edition of or the newspaper can certainly be a point of view of the group of experts of the IMF, but we have an official document a ”Letter of Intent” the provisions of which stipulate for basic principles of our work. The last signed document does not call for the increase of the retirement age. Thus I would not say “We have nothing else to do but to terminate the cooperation with IMF or raise the pension age”. That’s no way to ask such a question. We are committed to prolonging collaboration with the International Monetary Fund as well as to pursuing a pension reform,” accentuated the Vice Prime Minister.