The Fund head informed the prime minister of the ongoing payment of pensions and maternity capital. They also conferred on the Fund’s interaction with the Federal Tax Service, and the network of multifunctional centers providing public services, as well as the provision of public services online.
From the transcript:
Medvedev: Anton Viktorovich, please give a brief description of the situation in the pension system and its current condition with an emphasis on certain issues. On one hand, these are the timely and full payment of pensions and the indexation. On the other hand, the operation of the system with due account of its constant development.
It was decided some time ago to reassign certain payment administering functions from the Pension Fund to the Tax Service. How well is the process coordinated? How are elements of this state mechanism working? In fact, people do not care who is doing the job. Most importantly, everything should be done on time, properly, and fully.
Drozdov: Dmitry Anatolyevich, the Pension Fund was acting as planned in the first eight months of this year. Budget revenue has grown by 7% year-on-year. This is the forecasted level. In the first half of the year, we reassigned all types of settlements to the Federal Tax Service, started the information exchange, and are currently receiving information about citizens’ entitlements from them, as all the reports are submitted to the Federal Tax Service on the one-stop principles. I mean the interaction has been established, and we are working normally.
Thanks to that, we are fulfilling every social obligation, both on pensions and on benefits. For instance, pensions are expected to grow by 4.5% this year. Given the 3.7% inflation outlook, there will be a real growth.
In addition, consistent with the law adopted in July of this year, pensions will be raised in the month following the resignation of a working pensioner starting January 1, which means that will be done two months earlier than before. We increase pensions of 3.9 million people in Russian constituent territories to the regional subsistence minimum, and pay the federal social supplement. Its size has slightly reduced, which shows that living standards of pensioners have been improving. The budget will assign 99.7 billion rubles for those purposes in 69 Russian constituent territories.
More than 8 million people have received maternity (family) capital certificates. More than 57% of them have fully spent the funds.
Medvedev: So, practically two-thirds have used the opportunities provided by the maternity certificate.
Drozdov: Slightly less. Some 92% of funds were spent on homes.
Medvedev: That was the idea. Since the moment of the establishment of the maternity certificate, or practically since 2007 when the program took effect, over 90% of funds have been spent on better homes. Do any of the applicants choose the pension?
Drozdov: Fewer than 1%. Mostly, these are funds, which are left after the payment or education spending… By the way, education is chosen by over 8%. So, we can see this program has been progressing well enough.
I would also like to mention that all Pension Fund services have become available in the electronic format. The full set of services can be received via the personal account section. For instance, about 30% of applicants seeking a lump-sum payment from the maternity (family) capital used their accounts.
I should say that our interaction with multifunctional centers resulted in a 25% decline in the number of Pension Fund visitors. Twenty-five percent visit multifunctional centers, and receive services there.
Medvedev: You mean this is more convenient. People do not have to visit various organizations; they receive everything they need at multifunctional centers.
Drozdov: Yes. Considering that we used to have about 32 million visitors per year in the past, citizens are saving lots of time and energy. We will continue working to expand points of interaction with the Pension Fund, in order to minimize the number of visits to the Pension Fund.
Medvedev: It is important to develop electronic services, so that people could use their personal accounts and the opportunities provided by multifunctional centers. There are also traditional forms, to which many of our citizens are accustomed. Of course, the Pension Fund should fully accommodate the needs of those citizens as well.
Source: government.ru
Photo: the Russian government press service