In the nearest future, the number of people affected by the retirement age hike will grow significantly, famous economist Igor Nikolayev, Doctor of Economics and Director of the FBK Institute of Strategic Analysis wrote in his blog on the Ekho Moskvy radio station website.
The decision the Russian authorities made this year will negatively affect the citizens due to several reasons: first, people have learned to count the money and they see how much they will lose because of the reform, the expert says. Given the average pension of RUR 14K ($200), the citizens will not receive some RUR 850K ($12K) for the five years of not receiving pensions.
The other reason is that the economic situation will deteriorate even further, which will make people of retirement and pre-retirement age feel more pessimistic.
The expert also believes that this painful reform shows that the government is expecting a new crisis.
“The decision looks especially ‘timely’ and ‘reasonable’ against the backdrop of a huge federal budget surplus (over RUR 2 tln, or $29 mio) in 2019. Just a reminder: in 2020-2021, the government is also expecting a significant surplus. So there’s an obvious question: if there was a huge surplus, why would you raise the retirement age? Seems you are getting ready for a crisis. Well, then you should admit it instead of promising people that we will soon be among the world’s five largest economies,” Nikolayev wrote.