The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, in the framework of further implementation of pension reform and improvement of pensions for retirees, drafted a bill on upgrading superannuation to servicemen and law enforcement officers and submits the document to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) for further consideration. This was announced by Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman during a Government session.

"Our next step is the proposal to improve the retirement payments to military pensioners. We submit such proposals to the NSDC, where at the level of the President we are to reach the final decisions aimed to ensure that our military retirees will receive higher pensions from January," the Head of Government emphasized.

He underlined the point at issue is 550 thousand military pensioners who will be able to receive higher superannuation. The mechanism of modernization of pensions will be similar to that one introduced in the fall.

"The modernization of pensions (military) will take place automatically. Pensions to servicemen who participated in combat will be bigger than usual. However, I am confident that the average increase will be not less than UAH 1.5 thousand", Volodymyr Groysman stressed.

Background

The Government of Ukraine determined implementation of a pension reform as one of the top priorities for 2017 and subsequent years. The said reform does not encapsulate an increase of the retirement age, instead introduces mechanisms for elimination of the pension equalization, the establishment of retirement payments based on the length of work, and also allows to overcome in the medium term a deficit of the Pension Fund, which today exceeds UAH 140 billion.

The bill on pension reform was adopted as one of the first draft laws by the Parliament in October this year. The document allowed to modernize the pensions for nearly 10 million pensioners and offered an opportunity to ensure the automatic updating of payments in subsequent periods.