Azerbaijan, Baku, April 14 (Trend, A. Akhundov)
Calculation of size of pensions in Azerbaijan on a unified system will require 400 million manat before the end of 2011, Salim Muslimov, Chairman of the State Social Security Fund of Azerbaijan (SSSF), told reporters on Thursday.
"One of the tasks set up by the State Pension-Insurance System Development Program of Azerbaijan for 2009-2015 is to eliminate gap between the pension size calculated according to an old system and that according to a new one, in effect since January 1, 2006", Muslimov reported.
The average size of pensions of those who retired prior to 2006, was 102 manat and subsequently increased up to 122 manat for a period of January 1, 2006-January 1, 2010 and to 150 manat during last year.
The number of pensioners has increased from 900,000 prior to 2006 to 1,290,000 at the moment.
"An individual approach will be applied to each of 900,000 pensioners in recalculation of pension size as this is a very difficult work requiring great physical efforts. Naturally, extra costs will be compensated at the price of state budget transfers. The recalculations will take a relatively long period of time as the existing legal acts need to be changed", SSSF Chief said.
According to Muslimov, the SSSF will submit a draft of changes of the existing legal provisions for consideration to the Cabinet of Ministers shortly. After the draft is agreed upon with all bodies concerned, its final version will be submitted to the President's Office.
"This work will be done after the bill of amendments to state budget-2011 forecast is approved", Muslimov said.
According to him, social justice will be observed under the new system of calculation of pension size and, if recalculation shows that the new pension size is lower than the old one, naturally, the latter will remain in force.
The official rate on April 14 is 0.7918 AZN/USD.