Zholnovich: 6 million workers are not enough to raise pensions
24 April 2024 12:18
To ensure an increase in pension payments, it is necessary to attract an additional 6 million people to the labour market. This was stated by Oksana Zholnovych, Minister of Social Policy, in a commentary to Espresso.
According to her, Ukraine has already faced a crisis in the PAYG pension system due to demographic and social indicators. In particular, the number of pensioners in our country is already 11 million, while only 10 million people are working. In order to increase payments, it is necessary to have at least 1.5 working people for every pensioner.
“One and a half to one person allows us to increase the amount of pension accruals, provided that there is a white-collar job, taxes are paid, and so on. That’s why we need to attract about 6 million people to the labour market so that our pensioners can live more decently and so that we can increase their pensions – this is objectivity,”
– zholnovych said.
She added that US aid cannot be used to pay pensions.
“There are no pay-as-you-go pensions in America. There is no such thing as a pay-as-you-go pension. There are accumulative pension accounts, like insurance accounts. Therefore, it is very difficult for them, for their voters, to explain that if they do not pay any such pensions to their citizens, then why they should transfer pensions to Ukrainian citizens,”
– the minister said.
Currently, there are 10.2 million pensioners in Ukraine, and the average pension is UAH 5,743. More than 60% of pensioners receive a pension of up to UAH 5,000.
Among the regions of Ukraine, Kyiv has the highest pensions – UAH 7,848. This is followed by Rivne (UAH 7,205), Donetsk (UAH 7,017), Luhansk (UAH 6,525) and Dnipro (UAH 6,333) regions.
