New indexation: Who will have pensions and by how much in 2022

In the outgoing year, despite the fact that the State Duma has already adopted the federal budget for 2022, there is still no clear understanding of who and by how much pensions will be increased. Formally, for today, the budget provides that The Pension Fund of Russia (PFR) should receive funds sufficient to increase old-age insurance pensions by 5.9% from January 1, 2022, and social pensions (they are usually indexed in April) – by 7.7%. However, the President of the Russian Federation instructed the government to consider increasing these percentages declared in the budget, since they are lower than official inflation, which is unacceptable, since by law the indexation of pensions should be higher than inflation. Exactly the same thing was repeated by President Putin during his press conference on December 23, 2021.

Putin answered the question about the indexation of pensions above inflation

The official response to the president’s words has so far been given only by the Ministry of Labor, which said that it had prepared proposals to compensate for additional inflation for pensioners next year. According to the estimates of this ministry, insurance pensions can be indexed already in the first half of next year by 7.7%, and in the second half of the year — at a level not lower than inflation, but no more precise figures were given.

But the Ministry of Finance, on the contrary, has so far refrained from official answers, although a Life source in the ministry confirmed that the issue of the execution of the president’s instructions is under deep study, but the indexation of pensions of those Russians who do not have additional sources of income is being considered as a priority. As for the implementation mechanism, the interlocutor of Life stressed that with a high degree of probability, one-time payments will be prepared for pensioners during the year, which will increase pensions to a level not lower than inflation, but this is provided that this very inflation does not rise to the level of double digits, otherwise unscheduled indexation is inevitable.

— The fact that the issue of indexation is raised at the level of the president signals that, most likely, a decision on this issue has already been prepared, – said Oleg Abelev, PhD, head of the analytical department of the company “Rikom-Trust”. – However, it’s not only about the percentage of indexation of the basic pension amount, but also about the surcharges that pensioners are entitled to. And there is a problem with surcharges, since their size is set by the regional authorities. They cannot do this by exceeding the limits of the adopted regional budgets. At least until it passes a special approval procedure in The Government of the Russian Federation. Therefore, to date, none of the officials officially names the exact figures of possible increases.

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