Number of active participants in paid pension system of Armenia reaches 130,000 people: 15.2 billion drams paid in total

ArmInfo. In 2015, 56845 citizens of Armenia joined the paid pension system (PPS), with the number of active payers reaching 130,000 people.  As of December 15, a total of 15.2 billion drams were paid, of which 7.6 billion drams were co-funded by the Government, Vahan Stepanyan, Head of the Central Depository of Armenia, told a news conference on December 23 He said the participatory interests for 2.2 billion drams were paid for 60 291 citizens in 2015, while another 159 participants did not manage to take their money back. V. Stepanyan said to avoid such mismatches, the Central Depository opened an account at Converse Bank for the given pension payments. "We could not contact 160 participants of the PPS to send annual reports on their accounts.  That is why we opened a special account at Converse Bank and transferred their funds to it. Now, they can get their money in cash after submitting an identification certificate to the Bank. According to Converse Bank, as of December 3, 37 participants in the paid pensions system received their funds," he said.

At the same time, Stepanyan said 165,079 reports were sent to the participants of the system, of which 151329 were requested in the print option. To avoid inaccuracies connected with the address of a participant, Vahan Stepanyan recommended filling a special application and indicating in it both the local address and the e-mail.

The voluntary accumulative pension system was introduced in Armenia on Jan 1 2011. The system will became compulsory starting Jan 1 2014.  According to the bill, the minimal pension in the country will be equal to the minimum wage, while the basic pension will total 150% of the minimum wage.  The compulsory accumulative pension system will apply to the citizens born after Jan 1 1974 (the citizens below 40).  Starting Jan 1 2014, 5% of their salaries will be transferred to their personal accumulative accounts. The government will transfer a similar amount (but no more than 25,000 drams). Starting from Feb 2014 pension assets in Armenia are managed by Amundi from France (subsidiary of Societe Generale (20%) and Credit Agricole (80%)) and C-Quadrat from Germany.  The operators of the paid pension account are Haypost, ARARATBANK, Ardshinbank, HSBC Bank Armenia, Armbusinessbank, VTB Bank (Armenia), Converse Bank and INECOBANK.  Many in Armenia still protest against the paid pensions system.