Without special pensions, the Pension Fund would have a surplus of 362 billion hryvnia: where does the money actually go?
2 July 10:52
Economist Oleg Belinsky has published his own analysis of the expenditure structure of the Pension Fund of Ukraine, in which he asserts that the real growth of the PFU budget over the past twenty years has not improved the situation for most pensioners. In his view, a significant portion of the system’s resources is directed toward financing high special pensions for certain categories of civil servants, reports
Belinsky published his post following an appeal by the Head of the Presidential Office , Kirill Budanov, who called on Ukrainians to “unite.”
According to the economist, it is incorrect to compare the Pension Fund’s expenditures across different years in hryvnia due to exchange rate fluctuations and inflation. Therefore, he converted all figures to euros and adjusted them for cumulative eurozone inflation to bring the amounts in line with the purchasing power of the euro in 2005.
According to his calculations, the Pension Fund’s real expenditures in 2005 prices were :
- 2005 – 8.43 billion euros;
- 2015 – 9.22 billion euros;
- 2025 – 14.48 billion euros.
At first glance, this indicates an increase in the fund’s budget of nearly 72% over twenty years.
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However, as Belinsky notes, the total amount of expenditures does not reflect the actual situation of most pensioners.
According to his data, as of early 2026, there were 10.17 million pensioners in Ukraine, of whom 8.6 million (84.6%) received a pension of up to 10,000 UAH. This group accounted for 62.2% of all pension payments, while 37.8% of the funds went to the 15.4% of pensioners with pensions exceeding 10,000 UAH.
The economist asserts that if we consider only the expenditures for the majority of pensioners, their total amount, adjusted for 2005 prices, is only 7.05 billion euros, which is nearly 16% less than the Pension Fund’s total budget in 2005.
“For the vast majority of pensioners, the financial scope of the system has shrunk in real terms, despite the nominal growth of the Pension Fund’s budget,” Belinsky notes.
Separately, the author of the analysis draws attention to the structure of the Pension Fund’s financing.
According to his calculations, in 2025, revenues from the unified social contribution (USC) amounted to 858.8 billion hryvnia, while annual payments to pensioners with pensions of up to 10,000 hryvnia totaled approximately 497 billion hryvnia.
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According to the economist, this means that the contributions themselves would be sufficient to finance the pensions of the vast majority of citizens without additional budgetary support.
At the same time, the state budget allocated an additional 117.3 billion hryvnia in subsidies to the Pension Fund.
Belinsky concludes that these funds are in fact used to provide special pensions for certain categories of former civil servants, particularly judges and prosecutors.
In his view, this structure of the pension system exacerbates social inequality and calls into question the principle of solidarity on which the pension system is based.
Commenting on calls for social unity, the economist emphasized that, in his view, achieving it will be difficult as long as the majority of citizens receive significantly smaller pensions than certain privileged groups.
As reported by
