The Russian Finance Ministry has proposed raising the pension age of men and women to 63, as a modified idea of the previous Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin, who predicted the need for such steps, Interfax reports.
The ministry wants to start implementing the initiative gradually in 2015, Deputy Finance Minister Alexander Novak said in a letter to the Ministry for Healthcare and Social Development.
The current pension age for men and women in Russia is 60 and 55 years respectively. The ministry wants to raise the age once by 3 months for men and 6 months for women in different periods.
In mid-January former Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin recommended an urgent raise of the pension age. The current deficit of the Pension Fund is 2% of GDP. The number of people in employment is dropping by 300,000 to 400,000 people annually.
