«The idea is humane, but other low-income categories of people may be offended»
State Duma Vice Speaker from the Liberal Democratic Party Boris Chernyshov submitted today, September 7, to the State Duma a bill on the payment of the 13th pension before pensioner's birthday. MK asked Georgy Ostapkovich, a reputable economist, director of the HSE Center for Market Research, to evaluate this initiative. How useful is this idea and how feasible is it?
The bill is aimed at providing pensioners with annual material support in the form of paying the 13th pension before the date of birth of the recipient of the pension, — this is stated in the explanatory note to the bill.
“One of the main holidays in the life of every person — his birthday — for many pensioners is no longer such. The organization of a festive table or event, a pleasant gift to oneself does not fit into the personal or family budget of this category of citizens,” Boris Chernyshov justified his initiative.
The bill proposes to provide pension payments to all categories of pensioners, working and non-working recipients of insurance pensions, state pensions and «military pensions».
— On the one hand, the idea is humane, it would be a joyful event for people. We have a socially oriented state, — says Georgy Ostapkovich. — Let's count. We have about 40 million pensioners, we take the average pension — rounded 20,000 rubles. (more precisely, 18,500 rubles). We multiply this amount by the number of pensioners and get 80 billion rubles. The question is, will the budget support this amount? But this should be decided by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. In September, the budget for 2024 will be adopted. Let me remind you that now we have a budget deficit of almost 3 trillion. rub.
Perhaps 80 billion rubles. — not such a big amount. Money may be found for these purposes in the budget. But, on the other hand, what will single mothers, disabled people say? And the students who still have a meager scholarship — less than 2,000 rubles?! And they should enter into life, raise the economy! Other low-income categories of people may be offended. Pensioners are far from the lowest income category. Of course, the pension is low, but at least they do not have problems with payments, they cannot go bankrupt… If we are to solve this problem, then we need to solve it as a whole.
And one more thing. If we introduce such a 13th pension, then, in my opinion, it would be more appropriate to break this amount into 12 months. Not for a birthday. Because it's hard to administer. It is necessary to calculate when a person has a birthday, it is necessary to additionally introduce specialists into the staff of the social fund who will monitor this. That is, in my opinion, it is easier to raise the annual pension by one average monthly pension. It will make more sense.