Republican Party of Armenia

 Attended by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, the enlarged meeting of the Kotayk Marz Board was held in Hrazdan, which was also attended by Sergo Karapetyan, Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artem Asatryan. The meeting discussed progress in spring agricultural works and programs scheduled for the near future. At the request of the attendees, the Prime Minister introduced the mandatory funded pension system and responded to various questions.

Tigran Sargsyan noted that the funded system is the best possible treatment of pensioners in an ageing society, and this is the opinion of well-known international experts. “If you want to guarantee a secure old age under the current system - the principle of solidarity between generations – you must increase the tax burden. The best specialists in the world also point out that this is a problem not only in Armenia, most of the countries in the world where there is the ageing of the population, are faced with this. There is one solution: workers should think about their secure old age together with the State. If this load is placed only on the income tax, the problem will never be solved,” the Prime Minister said.

According to Tigran Sargsyan, Armenia has the solution to the problem and should take advantage of it in order to provide prosperous old age for today’s youth. Concerning the question of how much should people save to have a secured old age, the Prime Minister said: “All our estimates and international comparisons show that when a person retires, his pension shall not be lower than 40 percent of the income at the time of retirement? To achieve this figure, a citizen in the course of their working lives should save at least 10 percent of their income.

According to the head of government the State will contribute 5 percent in order to ease the burden of citizens. In addition, in 2014 such programs will be carried out, which provide higher wages. In this regard, work is carried out in two directions: the public and private sectors. Concerning the first one, a political decision was made to gradually increase the minimum wage to reach AMD75 thousand. Salaries of civil servants with July 1, 2014 year also substantially rise. “We, as a nation, if we want to stand firmly on our feet, we do not have the right to think only about today's and tomorrow's the other day, because the day after tomorrow we will find ourselves in front of a broken tub and no one will help us to solve the problem of pensioners. This financial burden is so big, that Armenia’s State budget will not be able to solve this problem. Of course, this is not an easy reform, and taking into account international experience, we have developed tools to mitigate the negative impact of the first phase,” the Prime Minister said.

Talking about the possibility of loss of savings, the head of government assured that a well-devised savings system was built, which takes into account the different risks. Savings would accumulate in global savings funds, which, using the tool of diversification, will place the amount in safe securities. According to Tigran Sargsyan, savings will be ensured even during world crises.

“The only way for those savings to be lost is not the global crisis, but the global collapse. Our law takes into account all risks and describes a mechanism that guarantees the reliability of the savings. Therefore, we have two world-famous fund managers in Armenia which will be under the control of the Central Bank,” the Prime Minister noted.

The Prime Minister also assured that the system will be visible soon. Part of the savings will be posted in the reliable real estate mortgage-backed assets. This, according to the Prime Minister, means that there will be long money on the market by 35-40 years, and today’s young people will be able to buy an apartment and pay for them over 35 years.

“The funded system makes flats available for our young families today. These savings will contribute to economic growth, because these amounts will be used in the construction of housing, which will contribute to the creation of new jobs and increased trade, new investment programs” Tigran Sargsyan noted.

During the meeting, Minister of Agriculture Sergo Karapetyan, handed awards to a number of agronomists for last year’s achievements in the field of agriculture.